A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face prosecution if they cannot justify their claims.

There may be trouble ahead

By Finlo Rohrer and Sarah Bell BBC News Magazine

A change in the law could mean mediums, psychics and healers face prosecution if they cannot justify their claims. Spiritualists are delivering a mass petition to Downing Street and complaining that a genuine religion is being discriminated against.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.

Whether it's TS Eliot or Shirley Ghostman, the world of the medium has been gently drizzled with ridicule for some decades.
But now psychics, healers and spiritualists fear a new threat. Not gentle ribbing, but the long arm of the law.
Parliament is about to debate measures that will see all forms of paid-for paranormal activities fall under the new Consumer Protection Regulations. As well as tackling a raft of more mundane commercial sharp practice, these regulations will also replace the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.

SPIRITUALISM Seven principles Practised since 19th Century Believe in god Believe contact with dead is possible Many mediums are not spiritualists

And some mediums are not happy. Under the old legislation, it had to be proven that any accused psychic was setting out to commit a fraud. The first case was a man in 1952 on a charge that he did in "purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium, unlawfully use a certain fraudulent device, namely, a length of cheesecloth". He was acquitted, setting a pattern for the last 50 years of very few prosecutions.
Under the new laws, some mediums feel they will be obliged to prove what they do. And when you're in the business of contacting spirits in the afterlife, that's not easy.
At Battersea Spiritualist Church, the new laws mean visiting medium Bill Rae is peppering his session of clairvoyance - for which there is only a voluntary collection - with disclaimers along the lines of "this is not science" and "this is just an experiment".
Spirit world
The clairvoyancy session is like a game of psychic battleships. Rae fires off little salvos. Most shots miss, but many hit, generating wonder in the congregation.
He speaks to a man a few rows back. Rae, who receives nothing more than expenses for these sessions, has seen a man in the "spirit world". He thinks it might be the subject's father. The man nods and Rae continues.

NEW REGULATIONS Aimed at unfair sales and marketing practices Follow EU directive Will need approval by Parliament Centre on "reasonable expectations of the average consumer" Persistent breaches punishable by enforcement order Breach of order punishable by two years in prison or fine

The medium describes the man's father as jolly and there is agreement from the subject. Now Rae sees a name. George. But the man knows no George. "Georgette?" No, the man replies.
Then the medium wants to establish where the man's father is from. He sees a link to Jamaica. No, says the man. Now Rae sees the word "Windward". The Windward Isles, he tentatively ventures. No, says the man again. But Rae is unperturbed. He guesses that the man is from an island. No again.
Then Rae has a purple patch. He asks about the name Gregory. The man's brother is called Gregory. And he infers that the man's father died of prostate cancer, which is correct. The subject comes from Washington DC and his family have been there for generations. But he is inspired by Rae's references to his brother and father and seems totally convinced.
Talking to Rae, it is immediately apparent that he has a strong and genuine belief in what he is doing.
Healing hands
Another person who is concerned over the new rules is Alison Lyndle, a spiritual healer, shaman and "space clearing consultant" who operates out of an anonymous interwar mock Tudor house in Harrow.
Contrary to the cliche of the heavily bejewelled healer, Lyndle's hands are unadorned with rings. And yet she, and the people who come to see her, believe they have the power to heal.
The patient lies on a GP surgery style bed as Lyndle lays hands on the patient's head for more than half an hour. Hearing just the chirping of birds and the gentle thrum of the central heating boiler turning on and off, it is easy to see how both sceptic and believer would feel better afterwards.

Derek Acorah is one of the country's better-known psychics

"I agree that there needs to be something in place to stop people who are fraudulent," she says. "I get e-mails from people from time-to-time saying they have paid thousands of pounds to people."
But she says that she fears that the law would open up the possibility that sceptics could make malicious complaints.
David McEntee-Taylor and his wife Carole have set up the Spiritual Workers Association to protect people like Lyndle and Rae and campaign against the new regulations.
McEntee-Taylor is particularly worried about the effect on spiritualist churches, many of which are held in impromptu venues which must be paid for.
And he is not happy about having to start religious services with a disclaimer, something that most religions would give short shrift to.
"If you believe why should there be a disclaimer? Why should it be different for us?"
And yet the established religious body, the Spiritualists' National Union - which claims 100,000 adherents - seems unconcerned by the imminent change in the law.
Minister Steven Upton, a spiritual healer and the movement's public relations head, says regulation to tackle fraudsters is welcome.
"We don't understand why people are protesting. If you are claiming you can prove life after death you've got a problem. We never guarantee it is going to work. Trained mediums don't make false claims."
Anecdotal evidence
Psychologist Prof Richard Wiseman has spent 15 years investigating psychics, healers and mediums and is unconvinced.
"Anecdotal evidence on their abilities is impressive, but if you put it under more scientific conditions, their claims tend to crumble. [Now] they will need to be able to justify the claims they are making."
But there are many ordinary people who will continue using mediums, and they come from diverse backgrounds.
Lorraine Crighton-Smith, 27, a journalist from London, saw a medium four years ago when a friend invited one to her house to do readings for a group of seven, professional, 30-something women.
"He asked 'who's William, who's Bill?'. I replied, 'he's my dad' and he said 'something's going to happen to your dad sweetheart'.
"I suppose I did worry for a while but I was more impressed he had mentioned a name familiar to me than I was concerned. He was spot on when he was talking about what I was like, my personality traits."

The Office of Fair Trading says enforcement of the new regulations will not target sessions like this or churches, instead being more likely to be used against foreign mass mailshot fraudsters extracting large sums of money.

But despite the protestations of officialdom, the medium community has enough foresight to see potential problems ahead.

---

Below is a selection of your comments.
I see the thin end of the wedge of persecution of spritualists, druidary, hedge witches and all those who do not practice Christian based religions. Government meddling in religion can never be welcome in any civilised society
Phil, London
Proper religions don't charge for advice, and these new regulations only cover paid-for services. I don't think spiritualism is being picked on, only those rogues who are happy to fleece vulnerable people.
Lucy Jones, Manchester

If we're going to ask psychics to prove their beliefs, shouldn't someone pass a law requiring the Pope to prove he can speak to God.

Perhaps the government should just give us all a bit more credit, we've all seen Derren Brown show us how easy it is to fake these things and lets be honest, the vast majority of people take it all with a pinch of salt. However, that doesn't mean that a bit of faith and belief can't be just as powerful as the best drugs. Just because we don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Gareth, Swansea

It makes me feel sick and angry to read accounts of cold readings or to see "mediums" at work. Cold reading, whether done as a con trick or done "in good faith" (ie equal credulousness on the part of both the medium and the mark) is about fishing; people remember the "surprising" hits and forget the wild misses. It's human nature to want to believe our loved ones live on elsewhere, and to want to seek comfort; taking advantage of it in this way is despicable. It's a confidence trick and so more power to this law.
Tom Morewood, London, UK

As someone who does not have 'traditional' religious belief I do find the above worrying. Not because I work in the field of psychics etc, I actually have a very normal job, but because of the worry this law could mean to those who do not follow an "accepted" religion.

Catholics believe that the wine and the wafer become Christ’s blood and body. Are they going to be made to back it up? Or will they just have to offer disclaimers as well?

I do believe there are some workers out there that prey on the vulnerable and any spiritualist, shaman or witch who truly had a religions belief would not do so.
Jenny, UK
Mediums claim to speak to the dead, but all of their apparent "skills" can also be attributed to cold reading, guesswork, trickery, psychology, and the fact most people tend to remember the hits and forget about all the misses. TV mediums like Derek Acorah also have the advantage of careful editing to eliminate any embarrassing errors.

So isn't it reasonable to ask these psychics to provide some real evidence that what they do is genuine, especially since they tend to deal with - and take money from - the bereaved and vulnerable?

Chris K, Cheltenham UK
I have plenty of friends who are Christians, Muslims, and practising Wiccans, I personally do not believe in any, but just because I do not believe does not give me the right to challenge them about the realism of there beliefs. I am disgusted that Parliament would even debate such a thing, after all mediums, psychics and healers are human, they make mistakes, just because a few mistakes might be made does not mean that a religion should be belittled and questioned in the manor that parliament so shamefully is debating. It is the fool that believes an entire religion should be belittled because of a single person.
.Sheryl Butler, Wallasey, England.

By the same logic they should insist that all religions prove that their God exists before accepting donations, otherwise it's obtaining money by false pretences.

Simon, Paris, France

- Additional Reporting

- The Scotsman

No happy medium as law makes presence

Published Date: 25 May 2008

By Jen Lavery

YOU have to ask why they didn't see it coming. Mediums and spiritualists are being forced to warn vulnerable customers that their services are not 'experimentally proven'.

European Union laws coming into force tomorrow will make clairvoyants admit that they have no evidence for their claims.

The new rules, to be enforced by the Office of Fair Trading, means mystics will have to display disclaimers,...


Previously, under the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act, prosecutors had to prove that a medium had intentionally given false information, or had given advice they knew would lead their customer to spend money.

Hanne Stinson, chief executive of the British Humanist Association, which has been campaigning for a change to the law, said: "We hope the new regulations will make real changes to the current situation, where psychic practitioners are permitted to make completely unsubstantiated claims and to take a payment for their services, without fear of legal action."

But Carole McEntee-Taylor, founder of the Spiritual Workers' Association – described on its website as a self-regulating body for its workers – says spiritualism should not be made subject to consumer protection regulations. "It's turning spiritualism the religion into a consumer product, which it is not," she said.

However, other mediums welcomed the move. Susie Collings, of the College of Psychic Studies, said the directive would tighten standards and discourage "less than ethical" practitioners.

She added that the new laws would mean the public would be more aware of what to expect from a reading. One concern, however, was that it could lead to unnecessary law suits and malicious civil actions.

It's official: religion has been debunked!

Submitted by Margaret Nelson (Suffolk Humanists) on Mon, 25/02/2008 - 12:26.

The following was posted on Facebook by Laurence Boyce of Cambridge (a member of the NSS and the Liberal Democrats), in response to the accusation from pro-religion people that he’s “a bigot” elsewhere on the Internet. Laurence wrote that one of his accusers had asked him …

… to justify my sweeping assertion that the claims of religion have largely been debunked by science and philosophy … determined to answer everyone's points (though nobody much was answering mine), I put together a little series of notes which I now collect here for future reference. Not to be taken too seriously – a bit like religion itself, I suppose!

With his permission, I’m sharing Laurence’s notes. Religious people of an easily-offended disposition are asked to read carefully, and learn.

___________

Contents

1. Plato
2. David Hume
3. Charles Darwin
4. Darwin's theory
5. Sam Harris
6. Reading list

1. Plato (428 - 347 BC)

OK, this is just a touch embarrassing. Hume and Darwin may have been largely responsible for holing religion below the waterline in modern times, but in fact God had already been dealt a fatal blow hundreds of years before Jesus and Mohammed even strutted their stuff. Here's the rough idea:

According to this story by Plato, Socrates meets a guy called Euthyphro on his way to the court house. He's going there to testify against his own father over something or other. So Socrates naturally asks him why the hell would he do that? Euthyphro replies that he believes it to be the will of the gods. And then Plato (in the words of Socrates) delivers the immortal punch line: "Do the gods wish for what is good, because it is good; or is what is good, good, because the gods wish for it?" Or something like that. This then came to be known as the Euthyphro dilemma, after the geezer who was off to condemn his dad because that's what he thought the gods wanted.

Here is Julian Baggini's version of the story from his amusing book of philosophical anecdotes, The Pig that Wants to be Eaten:

And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, "I am the Lord thy God, and I am the source of all that is good. Why does thy secular moral philosophy ignore me?"

And the philosopher spake unto the Lord, "To answer I must first ask you some questions. You command us to do what is good. But is it good because you command it, or do you command it because it is good?"

"Ur," said the Lord. "It's good because I command it?"

"The wrong answer, surely, your mightiness! If the good is only good because you say it is so, then you could, if you wished, make it so that torturing infants was good. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?"

"Of course!" replieth the Lord. "I tested thee and thou hast made me pleased. What was the other choice again?"

"You choose what is good because it is good. But that shows quite clearly that goodness does not depend on you at all. So we don't need to study God to study the good."

"Even so," spake the Lord, "you've got to admit I've written some pretty good textbooks on the subject . . ."

So, after a moment's thought, we may see that God (or the gods) cannot reasonably be the source of all goodness. Whatever goodness is (and that is another question really), it is a standard against which both man and God must be measured equally. Unless we would prefer it that whatever God commands should go unchallenged, even including a command to torture infants.

But of course God would never issue evil commands like that. Well . . . not quite so fast. One biblical story that sticks in the memory is that of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22). God commands Abraham to offer up his son Isaac as a blood sacrifice because . . . well, God just needs a regular supply of blood sacrifice to keep him going. Don't you? So Abraham says, "right you are God," and takes Isaac up a distant mountain, puts him on a pyre, ties him down, sharpens the knife, raises it into the sky, ready to plunge it into the heart of his only son. By this stage, Isaac is really shitting himself. Then, at the very last moment, God says, "Aha!!! Only kidding!!!" Now both Abraham and Isaac are pissing themselves at the sheer hilarity of the situation. They're miles from home, cold and tired, Isaac is still tied down on the altar, and Abraham is laughing so hard that he can't even undo the knots.

The point of the story, as I'm sure you know, is that God was putting Abraham to the test – a test he passed with flying colours. But I don't see it that way at all. I think that both God and Abraham failed the test big time. God, for asking Abraham to do such a sick and twisted thing in the first place; and Abraham, for going along with it. Because, as Plato showed, God has to be judged by the same standards that we are judged. We have every right, and indeed a responsibility, to question God's wishes, to call God to account, and ultimately even to condemn God after a fair hearing.

Question for the reader: What would you do if God appeared to you in the middle of the night and asked you to kill your only child?

2. David Hume (1711 - 1776)

I love Hume. Not that I knew him personally you understand. The peaceable Scot who was way ahead of his time, and yet liked nothing better than to relax with his mates of an evening around the billiard table. Mindful of the fact that not so long ago, an eighteen year old student named Thomas Aikenhead had been convicted and hanged for "blasphemy," Hume had to tread with caution. For this reason, his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion were written in the form of a . . . dialogue (amazingly!) between fictional characters, and even then were only published posthumously. Here is an interesting passage from the Dialogues which is often cited for its spooky anticipation of Darwin:

If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel, when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; much labour lost; many fruitless trials made; and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making.

Wow! But for me, Hume's greatest contribution lies in his brilliant demolition of the whole concept of "miracles." While Protestants may feel a sense of smug superiority upon hearing of bleeding Catholic statues and the like, the truth is that miracles are central to the entire project of religion. For put simply, a miracle is the opening up of a channel of communication between the domains of nature and supernature. Normally the channel stays open for a very short period (for some reason) – but if there is no channel at all, if the two domains are completely cut off from one another, then . . . what is the point? You might as well be telling me about Pluto, which would doubtless be very interesting – but not that interesting.

Anyway, it all began when Hume was staying at the theological college of La Flèche in France, so he could get on with some writing in peace. One day, Hume fell into conversation with a Jesuit who sought to impress him with some tale about a miracle which had supposedly taken place within the college. Hume, deciding that this tommyrot simply had to stop, tried gently explaining his maxim (which we will come to in a minute). Upon hearing it, the Jesuit dropped his jaw like a fish and exclaimed, "But sir, if you are right about this, then the same would hold for all the miracles in the Bible!"

Hume was at a loss as to how to respond. Two paths opened before him: He could either slap his forehead and say, "Doh! Silly me! Just forget everything I said!" Or he could say, "Yes, well the Bible's a pile of shite – I thought we all knew that anyway." Uncertain of his ground, Hume beat a hasty retreat to his study and promptly wrote out his famous essay Of Miracles – first published in 1748, anonymously of course for fear of all the usual reprisals.

It's a terrific piece of prose in two parts, though Part I does most of the damage. Hume gradually assembles his argument that "a wise man [should] proportion his belief to the evidence," by way of an entertaining series of stories and anecdotes. In order to believe in a miracle, clearly some sort of evidence is required, but the key thing is that the evidence must scale with what is being claimed. Here is how Hume sums up his case in what, now I come to think of it, must be my favourite paragraph in the whole of the English language:

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which remains after deducting the inferior. When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

I love that, "When anyone tells me he saw a dead man restored to life." Not mentioning any names of course! Prison would have been no picnic for Hume – he certainly wouldn't have enjoyed the luxury of a billiard table in jail, like you would today. (What a foul disgrace that, even as I write, the Blasphemy Act of 1698 has yet to be repealed.)

There's also a bit of a technical argument to Hume's maxim. Even if the quality of the evidence were to surpass the required level, we are still left with this "mutual destruction of arguments" between the testimony on the one hand, and the entire weight of human experience on the other – experience which in general would suggest that the dead do not rise up from the grave. So, still no reason to stand back in amazement. Don't worry if you can't get your head around that part. The bottom line is that "miracles" are just a complete load of bollocks. At any time. In any place.

But for me, Hume's essay does so much more than simply procure for us a handy "miracle test" with which to shoo away simpletons making preposterous claims. Hume seems to be telling us that we wouldn't even want a miracle story to be true. For example, I love fine wines. The ones I love the best are the ones I can't afford. But had I been a guest of the Wedding at Cana, I think I would have taken Jesus to one side and given him a little lecture along the lines of: "Very clever superman, now why don't you just turn the wine back into water, and we'll say no more about it, eh? There's a good Saviour of mankind."

Think about it. What do we stand to gain? Some wine. What do we stand to lose? Reason and sanity. It hardly seems worth the risk. Certainly not for a wine which pre-dates the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée scheme. It does make you wonder though whether that story might not have been devised specifically to appeal to pissheads.

Question for the reader: Which do you think is more likely: that Jesus turned water into wine, or that somebody made that story up?

3. Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

Charles Darwin invented Darwin's theory of evolution. You knew that, didn't you? But possibly the most important thing to understand about Darwin's theory is that it is . . . just that – a theory. A bloody good theory, but nonetheless . . . just a theory. A theory of massive explanatory and predictive power, which has, over the course of the last century, forged a compelling unity and coherence out of the biological sciences, while simultaneously shedding a powerful light upon that which could scarcely be of greater import – the very nature of the human condition itself. But . . . when all's said and done (and I really can't stress this enough) . . . just a theory.

Darwin studied theology at Cambridge (now there's an irony) before heading off on a sailing trip around the Galápagos Islands off the coast of modern Ecuador. The adventure was to have a number of onerous consequences. Firstly, it resulted in Darwin losing his Christian faith. Sadly, he also lost his health which was never to return for the remainder of his life. And finally, he changed the world utterly and irrevocably. Not bad for a boat trip.

Darwin made a close study of fauna, especially finches, and discovered that they were all slightly different from one island to the next. This led him to the conclusion that, though distinct, the various species of finches were clearly descended from some common ancestor. So this got him to wondering whether in fact all species might not be related by way of a gradual series of increments, the overall difference (and this is the key insight) being one of degree not of kind.

Darwin spent the rest of his life working on his little theory, including a whacking eight years on barnacles alone. He liked barnacles. The writings of Thomas Malthus provided him with the explanatory mechanism – now known as "survival of the fittest" – for why species might undergo such a gradual "evolution." Really the only bit missing was the genetic understanding which was to come later. Eventually, spurred on by the knowledge that Alfred Wallace was coming to roughly the same conclusions, he let off his little bombshell in 1859.

Reaction to The Origin of Species was mixed. Some people said that his findings contradicted the Bible, and therefore could not possibly be true. These folk live on to this day and are known as "creationists," but they are a very tiny minority – in America, only 53% for instance (according to those pesky polls). Others performed a soft shoe shuffle and said that they had never really believed in Genesis literally anyhow. These people are called religious "moderates." Darwin's own reaction was a little more dramatic. He said he felt as though he were confessing to a murder.

But perhaps the most telling reaction of all came from the wife of the Bishop of Birmingham who is reported to have said to her husband, "My dear, let us hope that it is not true; but, if it is true, let us hope that it does not become generally known." So much for the Protestant liberal tradition! Of course I have no idea whether or not she actually said that, but it's certainly what she should have said. For nothing, but nothing, has been more corrosive to the project of religion than the theory of evolution through natural selection. Here's why:

Question for the reader: How concerned should we be to learn that the most powerful nation on Earth appears to be in the grip of a medieval superstition?

4. Darwin's theory

The first and perhaps most obvious problem is, as has already been touched upon, that evolution falsifies a literal interpretation of Genesis. However, most Christians don't seem to get too exercised over the fact that the "word of God" is wildly inaccurate. Six days, 14 billion years – we've all been there, especially the software engineers among us. Besides, this was not exactly news in 1859. Earlier that century, geologists had already noted, through studying rocks and stuff, that the biblical time-scales were simply infeasible.

Nevertheless, to this day the "debate" still largely seems to centre around questions concerning whether the Hebrew word for "day" means just one revolution of the earth, or whether it really means "f***ing ages." Indeed, there are times when I get to wondering if this fatuous argument is not prosecuted purely in order to distract attention away from what is possibly the bigger embarrassment – namely that evolutionary theory drives a coach and horses through the foundational Christian doctrine of the fall and redemption.

If you attend the extended Christmas or Easter liturgies, as bizarrely I still do, you will find that the story begins (where else?) with Adam eating an apple – the felix culpa from which all else follows. Of course modern Christians don't take this too literally either. There was no apple, no Adam and Eve as such, no serpent, no garden – rather the story merely symbolises mankind's fall from grace into its present disordered and unhappy state from which it now cries out to the Almighty for salvation. It's just an allegory, stupid!

Except . . . it's not exactly a brilliant allegory either. I thought that allegories were supposed to inform and illuminate, but this one just misleads. Because neither was there any "fall from grace." Instead, we started out as pond scum, became fish, then small furry creatures, monkeys, and finally humans (missing out a few steps there). And how did that happen? It all came about on account of the struggle for survival – a bitter and ongoing fight over finite resources – ultimately, a fight to the death. And get this: it's been that way for the best part of 500 million years. Here's Dawkins:

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease. It must be so. If there is ever a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.

Great! And whose fault is all of that? It's God's fault. That's right – the big cheese himself. That's the way he chose to set things up, in his "infinite wisdom." But now, maybe sensing that we were not far off stumbling upon the truth, God plays an absolute blinder – he tries to blame it all on us! He tells us that all this misery is a consequence of human "sin" and then, just to complete the illusion, sends his only son to "save us" by allowing him to be brutally tortured and executed, doubtless imagining (correctly as it happens) that we might be impressed with that sort of thing.

This is what I mean when I state unequivocally that the position staked out by the religious moderate is intellectually and theologically bankrupt. I'm not terribly impressed with Christians who believe in evolution. Granted, they may not be flying in the face of modern science with all the arrogance and ignorance of an evangelical nut-job. No, instead they're just worshipping – yes, worshipping – the most cynical bastard in all of history, literature, or mythology.

I'm really looking forward to the day of judgement. I can't wait to see the look of dismay on God's face when it finally dawns on him that he's actually going to be entering the dock himself.

Question for the reader: Why would the omniscient, benevolent, and omnipotent creator of the universe appear to be so cruel, wasteful, and lazy?

5. Sam Harris (born 1967)

Sam Harris shot to prominence in 2004 with his best-selling book The End of Faith, which has managed to draw sharp criticism from religionist and secularist alike – a sure sign that he must be doing something right! It's a superb book – packed with useful insight and displaying a fine mastery of the English language to boot. I don't agree with all of it. In particular, the final chapter caused some of us a few difficulties, especially when he started quoting Padmasambhava approvingly! But for exposing the duplicitous role of the "religious moderate" in unwittingly providing comfort and cover for the extremist, I'm afraid he scores a perfect ten in my book. "By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally." I don't think I could have put it any better myself!

But that is all by the way, because our interest here is in questions of science and philosophy – and so to his lesser-known day job as a neuroscience PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles. When I first heard about Harris's research, I assumed that he was going to stick probes onto people's heads, and try to show that religious beliefs were fundamentally different in some way from "normal" beliefs. In fact, he's doing something far more interesting – he's trying to show that they're the same! I'll let him explain what he's up to:

What I believe, though cannot yet prove, is that belief is a content-independent process. Which is to say that beliefs about God – to the degree that they really are believed – are the same as beliefs about numbers, penguins, tofu, or anything else. This is not to say that all of our representations of the world are acquired through language, or that all linguistic representations are on the same logical footing. And we know that different regions of the brain are involved in judging the truth of statements drawn from different content domains. What I do believe, however, is that the neural processes governing the final acceptance of a statement as "true" rely on more fundamental, reward-related circuitry in our frontal lobes – probably the same regions that judge the pleasantness of tastes and odours. Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense. And false statements may quite literally disgust us.

All of this is very much in its infancy, and doubtless will not be the work of just one man. Ultimately this may turn out to be a futile quest – it may not be possible to prove that all belief is fundamentally on an equal footing, indeed it may not even be true. But we'll just follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if it leads to God (which would be a first)! If you're interested, Harris had an initial paper published before Christmas. It's available here (pdf), though I can't claim to understand any of it.

That said, I do find this idea highly plausible. We all know, or should do, just how malleable and suggestible the human brain is. One of my favourite demonstrations of this involves Derren Brown making a nice lady act like she was under some kind of voodoo spell. First, she can't move her legs, then she can't move her arms, and finally she can't even speak – all courtesy of Derren manipulating the little levers in her brain to convince her that there really might be something in this voodoo doll malarkey after all.

The moral is that, "As a nice lady thinks, so she will act." Or as Harris would say, "A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life." Yet, time and again, I seem to come right up against this tired old false dichotomy, so cherished by liberals, between belief and action. "People are free to think and say whatever they like, as long as they keep off my front lawn." If only I had a pound – hey, 50p even! – for every time I had heard that glib sentiment, I would have long since retired to Hawaii and you could all blissfully carry on without me.

Of course the sentiment is valid in a strictly legal sense but, in just about every other sense, it is hopelessly outdated. Beliefs are in no way separate from actions. In fact, beliefs are actions, and can be just as lethal. The neural activity which constitutes a belief connects directly to a nervous system running through your arm and finger, which pulls the trigger, that fires a bullet, that kills the President, which starts a nuclear war – it's all of a piece. To think otherwise, is essentially to buy into a philosophical dualism of the mind which bit the dust absolutely ages ago.

Beliefs have potentially devastating consequences – 9/11 should have proved that beyond any doubt but, as the fatuous search for "root causes" continues apace, one has to wonder whether 2,998 may not have died in vain. Yet Harris is out to show that the core beliefs motivating the hijackers – beliefs in the Koran, Islamic jihad, the afterlife, and so on – are fundamentally no different in character from beliefs about the weather! Of course, some of the more batshit crazy ideas may be a little harder to acquire, taking years of persistent indoctrination not unlike the lengthy process of learning a musical instrument. But once acquired – once the brain, finding that the belief "tastes good," grants it canonical status – then pretty much everything else follows for better or for worse.

Religious belief, or indeed any other belief, is emphatically not a private matter. Rather, a belief is merely an action primed, cocked, and ready for battle. If we are "as liberals" to insist that it is not beliefs but only actions which matter, then I fear we may find ourselves having to clear up the mess following one 9/11 and 7/7 after another. It is time that we went after the bad ideas with a vengeance. The claims of religion are false – we are now in a position to state this with overwhelming confidence. If liberalism means one thing, then it must surely be about setting the individual free. It isn't entirely clear to me just how shackling ourselves to the ignorance of the past can form any part of this project.

Question for the reader: When we observe how easily the mind may be altered by hypnosis or drugs, why do some of us appear to imagine that religion is quite incapable of performing the same trick?

6. Reading list

No lecture series, facetious or otherwise, would be complete without a recommended reading list. This basically covers the arse of the lecturer against the inevitable errors and omissions of his own exposition. "You'll have to turn to the reading list for a fuller treatment," he will say. So here it is!

• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding – A bit heavy going as you might expect, but the chapter on miracles is fairly readable, and that is the important bit.
• Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden – Explains evolution as only Dawkins can. Should be read by every child in the land.
• Sam Harris, The End of Faith – In my view, the best of the post 9/11 anti-God diatribes. Should be read by every condescending atheist in the land.
• Julian Baggini, Atheism – This tiny book sets out the philosophical arguments against God in the simplest possible terms. Another one for the Christmas stocking methinks.
• Victor Stenger, God, the Failed Hypothesis – And this one sets out the scientific arguments against God. Probably wouldn't appeal to those without a strong interest in science.
• Ludovic Kennedy, All in the Mind – Superb historical sweep charting the rise and fall of God. Great reference book.

OK, that's enough books. If you're still "doing God" after reading that little lot, then I don't think there's a great deal more I can do to help you. But make no mistake – you do need help! I think I'm going to leave the last word to Hume. This, the final paragraph from the Enquiry:

Tags: Religion, Atheism, Facebook, Debunking, God

Richard Dawkins 'Enemies of Reason' - Monday 13th August - Summary

Astrology

A full quarter of the British population claim to believe in astrology while astrological horoscopes get far more newspaper column inches than science.

Richard Dawkins begins his journey by questioning this irrational institution embedded in our culture. He tackles the Observer's astrologer, Neil Spencer [pictured], on how the movement of planets could possibly signify petty developments in our love life or career, and compares the thin pickings of astrology with the real science of astronomy that is revealing the true grandeur of the Cosmos.

The paranormal

Half the British population now claim to believe in paranormal phenomena. Psychics are cluttering our TV schedules, flogging readings on the net and, increasingly, blossoming on our high streets. After garnering tips on psychics' entirely earthly trade secrets from the illusionist Derren Brown, Richard attends a s?ance and confronts the medium, Craig Hamilton-Parker, on the psychological damage his unproven claims may have on bereaved people who desperately want to believe what feels good.
Time and again, the interviewees that Richard Dawkins encounters appeal to personal revelation or second-hand anecdote to justify their belief. Richard Dawkins now explains why this cannot be the basis for rational knowledge. He compares how science unravelled the mystery of echo location in bats in the 1940s through rigorous experiment and mutually supporting results to a paranormal phenomenon such as water divining. Psychic detection of water through dowsing isn't inherently implausible – but, as Richard discovers when he attends a double blind trial supervised by the paranormal investigator Professor Chris French, it never works when a rigorous experiment is conducted.

The evidence for the spirit world or psychic phenomena is simply not robust and repeatable. Rather, it's Will-o'-the-wisp. The more science looks at it, the weaker it becomes.

Looking to the past

So why do people still irrationally cling on to unproven beliefs? Richard turns to the origins of superstition in our past. He looks at our pre-disposition to seek pattern in the randomness of nature, a survival mechanism from our distant evolutionary past.
He also explores how our ancestors imbued 'spiritual quality' to inanimate objects – and many people still do, including the New Age guru, Satish Kumar, who argues that a rock or a tree have intrinsic 'spirit'. Richard puts the case for reality that can be observed and tested – the objective wonders that science has revealed.
Once society exalted scientists as heroes. Their insights fuelled tangible progress, from clean water to networked computing, self-evident benefits that we now take for granted.

Yet as science has moved on, it's become more complex and difficult to grasp. It's easier to portray scientists as the people who bring us 'Frankenstein food', pollute the environment or conduct sinister experiments on defenceless little animals.

Prejudice in schools

Dawkins argues that prejudice against science is evident in schools. Physics A' levels have halved in the last 25 years, chemistry fallen by more than a third. University departments are closing all round the country.
He lays the blame with 'relativist' thinkers who have made it fashionable in education to teach students to value private feeling more highly than evidence-based reason.
He challenges the sociologist Steve Fuller who claims the internet is opening up science and evidence and this is no bad thing...

Wikipedia

For Richard Dawkins, 'Wikipedia world' presents both great opportunity and huge danger. The impersonal algorithms of internet search engines do not weed out robust evidence from unsourced, uncorroborated assertion. Paranoid conspiracy theories circulate on the web unchallenged, from harmless fun about fake moon landings to downright insidious lies about 9/11 or the highly damaging but ultimately discredited scare over the MMR vaccine. This, argues Dawkins, is where the irrational mindset, the world of private hunches and no respect for evidence, can lead us.

Medicine under attack

Today science is treated with suspicion, perhaps born of fear and even medical advance is challenged by the march of irrational belief.
While we indulge unproven healing 'magic', tried and tested scientific medicine is under attack. Media 'causes celebres' – from side effects to superbugs – have bred widespread cynicism about medical progress.
The danger of devaluing evidence has never been more apparent than when one survey of twelve children wrongly linked MMR vaccine with autism and yet prompted hundreds of thousands of parents to opt their children out of entirely sensible inoculations to ward off dangerous diseases.
Where once there was reason, now there is confusion...

The Gullible Age: Review of 'The Enemies of Reason' by Richard Dawkins on C4 starts 13th August

Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion sold a million copies. In a new and hilarious onslaught he pits hard science against astrology, tarot, psychics, homeopathy and other 'gullibiligy'

reposted from richarddawkins.net and here.


by Times Online
Reposted from:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2198063.ece



They sang about it back in the 1960s, taking their clothes off on stage and extolling "mystic crystal revelation and the mind's true liberation". Few back then dared hope that their new age would one day be a broad enough church to embrace the heir to the throne and the wife of a prime minister. Cherie Blair has worn Mexican "bio-electric shield" pendants, Prince Charles endorses alternative medicine, and those hallowed shrines of capitalist consumer-ism Selfridges and Harrods host the Psychic Sisters mediums.

Even modern global oil corporations have used dowsers to search for deposits But now Richard Dawkins, the man who told you that God was not only dead but had all along been a bogeyman invented by bogeymen, has levelled his sights at the whole new age caravanserai, including astrologers, spirit mediums, faith healers and homeopathic medicine. Is it high noon for the Age of Aquarius? It is the believers in Aquarius (and Leo and Taurus and Pisces) who attract the first body blow in Dawkins's new Channel 4 series The Enemies of Reason, which begins next week.

Dawkins is horrified that 25% of the British public has some belief in astrology – more than in any one established religion – and that more newspaper column inches are devoted to horoscopes than to science. Leaning back on a sofa in the faded gothic splendour of Oxford's 14th century New College he sighs with something approaching despair: "It belittles our universe. To have astrologers demeaning astronomy by tapping into the spine-tingling wonder of the universe is . . ." he struggles briefly for a word, then finds one and pronounces it with a keen awareness of the irony: "Sacrilegious!"

For Dawkins, of course, science is a religion, at least in the sense that it is something he fiercely believes in, a belief system that insists its dogma stand up to rigorous "double blind" experimental testing and rejects anything that fails. Those who refuse to put their beliefs to any test, he suggests, do so because they instinctively know they will fail. He gives short shrift to the astrologer Neil Spencer's refusal to explain his "art" beyond claiming it to be a "deep dark mystery". He has more sympathy, though only just, for a group of dowsers attempting to find one canister containing water amid 11 containing sand.

The results are no better than the law of averages – or pure guesswork – leaving one woman close to tears, devastated by the apparent disappearance of her powers.

"I don't enjoy dashing people's lifetime careers, but if their careers are based on claims that are simply wrong . . ." he lets the sentence tail off, implying a good dashing is what they deserve. Not that it does much good. In most cases he has discovered both practitioners and believers immediately invent reasons why the experiment was flawed or a fluke to keep their faith. "The forgivingness of the gullible is amazing," he says.

The closest he can come to sympathy is to quote the British-Brazilian Nobel prize winner Peter Medawar's dismissal of the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's confused teaching on evolution: "He can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he took great pains to deceive himself."

But the real scorn, and I can almost detect a tinge of repressed involuntary hatred beneath his unfailingly polite exterior, falls on spirit mediums, whom Dawkins clearly believes to be little better than confidence tricksters feeding on the emotionally insecure or damaged. At a new age "trade fair" featured in the first episode of his series we hear Simon Goodfellow, a Midlands card reader, tell him he should prepare for a change in his life. But hinting at retirement to a man in his sixties is hardly a miracle of divination.

Goodfellow, obviously struggling to find something that strikes a chord with this seemingly mild-mannered elderly gentleman in front of him, tries to get a reaction for "a male relative with a G", possibly who has "served in the armed forces" – again hardly a wild guess for a man of Dawkins's age and class, except that he is barking up the wrong family tree. "No, nobody in my family involved in the military at all," is the glacially polite reply. Goodfellow, obviously wishing he had predicted his own ill-fortune for the day, makes a final stab at a "female with E", only to fail equally abysmally. Dawkins refers to the skilled television illusionist and "mind reader" Derren Brown, a master of "cold reading" (and explaining it afterwards) who takes hints and clues from the person or audience, then plays on the reaction, drawing inferences and using basic psychology so that in many cases the person being "read" provides most of the information.

More often than not the "reader" simply offers a variety of obvious routes for them to go down: when he sees someone fighting emotion or close to tears he can say with phoney sincerity: "I'm sensing tragedy here, a death, maybe quite recent." Dawkins says of the mediums: "These are people making money out of others' grief." He is unwilling to see much moral difference between show business types who perform in front of an audience for profit and the spiritualist leaders who conduct essentially similar "services" in so-called churches.

It is not hard to see this as a grey area where new age beliefs and superstitions blend with the old established religions. Have lucky charms and incantations simply supplanted rosaries and Hail Marys? Is there much essential difference between a spiritualist preacher communing with the other side and a priest praying to saints for divine intercession? For Dawkins the traditional religious – or indeed superstitious – defence, that the very concept of belief requires you to make a leap beyond the available evidence, is an insult to human intelligence. But what annoys him most is the people who take chunks of scientific language and blend it into "their own mumbo-jumbo". A woman in Glastonbury (where else?) claimed to have "altered his DNA" back to its original "Atlantean" structure by inserting the "missing triangles".

Dawkins has yet to feel any effect, he says with a smile before adding dismissively: "Of course, it's complete and utter rubbish. DNA is a spiral helix. There are no triangles involved." There is a world-weary incredulity in his voice when he asks me: "Did you see her face? Do you think these people really believe it?" I have to admit that I suspect they do, although faced with Dawkins's searching intellectual gaze, more than one of his interviewees seems forced into what looks suspiciously like a smile of mild embarrassment.

He has not yet caught up with the BBC's imported blockbuster Heroes, in which a twist in DNA in certain individuals brings on mutations that give superpowers, a hugely successful television fantasy piggybacking on what I suggest is a modern trend towards "wistful thinking". "I very much like that science fiction style of imagination which breaks out of the box and imagines things that could be true," he says, but he is no fan of that which takes the science out of the fiction. Obviously not a great television viewer, he also performed the minor miracle of altogether missing The X Files, although he approved of setting the sceptical Agent Scully against the paranormal proselytiser Mulder.

As far as Dawkins is concerned the truth is indeed out there, but too many of us are looking in the wrong direction. I put it to him that his assertion that these unverifiable beliefs "undermine our civilisation" flies in the face of the importance of richness of myth and religious belief to our artistic and cultural inheritance. His answer is straightforward: "I suppose that's an aesthetic judge-ment."

For him there is little more glorious than pure knowledge. "I regard the current backlash against science as a betrayal of the Enlightenment." He deplores the slide in science in British universities. Could it simply be that modern science is too hard for most people, and that superstition and religion have always been a way in which the wonders and vicissitudes of the natural world have been made accessible to the masses? I can see it does not come easy for Dawkins to sympathise with the truly ignorant. "That shouldn't be a licence to lie. The universe doesn't owe us justice," he says. "If people are down on their luck, there's no reason why that should change. There's no reason for people like Hitler and Stalin to get their comeuppance, much as we might like them to. "I shouldn't want people to behave in a particular way on account of a lie, though I expect some politicians would. Tony Benn, for example. I don't think he'd care whether something is true or not – just whether or not it benefits humanity."

I suggest that is more or less classic Marxism, and perhaps where it comes closer to humanism. But this is one area where Dawkins would have more in common with the Romantic poet John Keats's "Beauty is truth, truth beauty", though they might have to argue a bit about the definitions.

A man who holds no truck with established religion is unsurpris-ingly unlikely to have much good to say about Scientology, which purports to use scientific tools such as its controversial "E-meter". "It's purely made-up. It just taps into some 'gullibiligy'. They find some film star or somebody like Tom Cruise or whatever his name is who's thick as two short planks and he becomes a sort of advertisement."

But he has more scorn for the likes of Deepak Cho-pra, the Indian who has written bestsellers with titles such as Quantum Healing, which Dawkins says suggest some spurious linkage between spirituality and cutting edge science. "There is much about quantum theory that sounds almost mystical," he is willing to admit. "Much of it is indeed still plain mystery, but its predictions are stunningly accurate."

What matters is not to use fuzzy references to verifiable scientific theory in order to accrue credibility. Is it also the backlash against science that has delayed appreciation of the true risks of global warming? Dawkins has no doubts about the evidence, and drives a hybrid Toyota Prius, one of the first imported into the country – its dashboard displays are in Japanese – proudly pointing out the indicator that shows when it is running on electric power only. Among the dangers of the revolt against conventional science he cites the widespread rejection of the MMR vaccine after Andrew Wakefield's now discredited report claiming a link to autism.

As Dawkins says: "There might be bad scientists, but that does not mean the methodology of science is bad." For him the acid test is forever and always: "Test it!" This is a principle totally lacking, he charges, at the Royal London Homeopathic hospital, recently refurbished to the tune of £20m, including £10m from the cash-strapped NHS, and with a plaque certifying the endorsement of the Prince of Wales. (His title for episode two of The Enemies of Reason is The Irrational Health Service.) What is undisputed is that homeopathy derived from an early misunderstanding of the principle behind vaccination: that like cures like.

But actually a real vaccine stimulates the body's own immune system to fight the disease. What makes homeopathy so truly absurd in Dawkins's inexorable logic is the idea that a substance becomes more powerful the more it is diluted. The idea, widely believed though totally unproven, is that water retains a "memory" of the molecule, though if it did he points out – as the people of Gloucester might nowadays bear in mind – it would also "remember" the salt, mud and urine it once contained. He cites the statistical probability that "one molecule in every litre of water drunk once passed through the bladder of Oliver Cromwell". Hardly reassuring for royalists.

"I say to doctors who use homeopathy: if you can identify this you'd have discovered a whole new force in physics. Either there is no effect, in which case you shouldn't be charging people money, or there is an effect, in which case you should prove it and win the Nobel prize."

The fact that homeopathic doctors and patients do claim there is a benefit he puts down to the human body's power to restore itself when given the psychological boost of someone else's concentrated concern and attention: the average half hour to an hour, rather than the typical eight-minute NHS GP consultation. "There was a time when old-fash-ioned family doctors used to hand out placebos but now they aren't allowed to because it's against medical ethics. Now it's only the homeopaths who are allowed to benefit from the placebo effect.

"Homeopathy started out about 200 years ago at a time when conventional medicine was considerably more dangerous. At least they weren't applying leeches." Dawkins insists that phenomena including religion, myths, superstition and science need to be seen in their historical context. He quotes the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke's Third Law, "any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

"But you can't simply reverse that and say that because it calls itself magic now it must be future science."

He admits that applied science can be a process of trial and error, but insists that recognising the error is what makes the difference. His own hope would be that in 500 years' time science will have advanced as far as it has in the past 500.

When I suggest that fundamental- ism in Islam – the culture that ironically kept scientific advance alive in the Middle Ages – and a revival of creationism among Christians could turn all that on his head, he closes his eyes and says with deep feeling: "A nightmare!"

The creationists can prepare for a rocky ride from Dawkins the year after next, which will be the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. "It's going to be a big Darwin year," he says with undisguised relish.

Dawkins doesn't want to ban religion – "as long as it's done between consenting adults in private", he adds only half jokingly.

His ambition is to make people in the 21st century appreciate the world that modern science has given them, rather than rejecting it at the same time as taking its benefits for granted.

"I'm interested in consciousness- raising. In the same way that femi- nists now wouldn't get worked up any more about the phrase 'one woman, one vote', because they've already made us think about the issue."

He can certainly claim to have done that. His atheist treatise The God Delusion, now out in paper- back, has already sold more than 1m copies globally, though he admits he hadn't thought of the possibility that a few people might have bought it to burn it.

He was bemused at one Christian journalist's attempt to maintain that he secretly did harbour a belief in a supreme being. "I might have used the word 'God' in the same way Einstein did when he said 'God doesn't play dice': what he meant was that the universe couldn't be different. He was arguing against Heisen- berg's uncertainty principle." It was one of the few arguments in which science eventually came down against Einstein.

Richard Dawkins can accept people's longing for "something else" – miracles or an afterlife. He just wishes they would look in the proper places. "There is a certain nobility about facing up to the truth. There is something wonderful about understanding!"

Perhaps it's what God gave us a brain for. Oh, dear . . .

The medium who found Dawkins's father on the far side

When Dawkins consulted a medium who has appeared on daytime television and charges £50 for instant phone readings she said she could hear or see his father "on the other side".

He did his best not to look surprised as she continued: "I'm aware of your father stood right behind you. "On a spiritual level he wasn't the most openest man with his thoughts and his feelings. Ummm, I kind of want to say that I do love you and I do care – but that wouldn't have been his character." (Or that of many middle-class father figures of his generation, a sceptic might have said.)

But Dawkins let her continue. "I'm aware that you don't have you dad's photograph out" – it was true, he didn't – "so I'm a little bit concerned why. So I'm going to ask you: why don't you have it out?" Dawkins had a bombshell ready: "Well, he might be aware that I don't have it out because he comes to the house about once a week." "Oh, he's still here," she said, adding after a few seconds: "I don't feel it's working."

"Is that because you thought my father is dead and discovered that he's still alive?"

"No, nothing to do with that. I don't know."

She commented later: "As a clairvoyant you're only as good as the client."

The Enemies Of Reason starts on Channel 4 on August 13