UKIP struggle to shed a somewhat deserved image of racism and sexism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26376026

Nigel Farage does tend to annoy me. He's come out with some real "zingers" of late, and unfortunately, UKIP's popularity is still a rather shameful burden to the progressive spirit of the country - based on how clearly he states his opinions, and on how clearly mistaken he often is.

Farage says that parts of the UK have become unrecognisable and in places you don't hear English spoken any more.  This was having a detrimental impact on social cohesion. "This is not the type of community we want to leave to our children"

This, of course, has undertones of racism. Could it be that people like Mr. Farage, who have no interest in integrating with "foreigners", are actually part of the problem in creating these "unrecognisable" areas? 

Go to any other country in Europe and you'll find English being spoken quite commonly, as well as the native tongue. In places like Sweden, most people can speak English to a pretty reasonable standard. 
Being the place of origin of English, the main "language of business" has made us culturally lazy in this country. There is little appetite for learning other languages amongst the general populace, because they think they don't need to, and so they feel threatened by any words they don't understand, and withdraw further. This is the feedback-loop that we unfortunately find ourselves in. Farage's folly here, of course, is to not realise this and assume that it is immigrants who must learn English, and never us that should take up a bit of another language, whilst actually, either solution would work.

What actually does have a detrimental impact on social cohesion, is racism. And I know one type of society that I don't want to leave to our children, and that's one which views immigration as an evil and Brits as intrinsically superior to everyone else.

To me, patriotism is the aspiration to continually improve the country's humanitarian welfare standards; to raise the consciousness of the country's citizens to the best of humanity's achievements and the best that humanity can achieve in the future. It is to hold ourselves to the highest standards of conduct whilst realising that things have not always been thus, and others may not be able to reciprocate, and if so they should be helped. Farage's main problem is how he always sees foreigners in a negative light, while in reality they are people, humans, just like everybody else.

Farage also said: "The most significant change is the rise of women in the party. Our women have achieve(d...sic) these positions on the European elections lists through merit, which is the example of the kind of society we want to live in."

The dark undercurrent of misogyny in this statement is pretty forceful. Notice the implicit assumption in his words, that some women who have reached important positions in business and society have not done so on merit. He is referring to, of course, female only shortlists, or quotas, for greater gender representation or equality, which those equality-challenged souls love to mock. This makes me laugh. The only reason that these shortlists are even needed (they are a temporary, last resort approach after all) is the glacial rate of natural improvement of the representation of women in business. This is not exactly surprising, but it is entirely avoidable and should have been rooted out some years ago. I say this because the problem is well-known to many.  A large study found that the problem of women being significantly disfavoured for jobs, when equally qualified as men, was endemic in the STEM fields; and even extended to women interviewers and employers themselves. So the point is that women will not be employed on merit in the natural business or academic environment at the moment. So Farage is fundamentally mistaken. And of course, notice how philosophically problematic it is for Farage to insinuate that women aren't as competent as men, since beating only other women to a job does not count as "getting there by merit". But on the other hand, isn't using the tactic of quotas or shortlists intrinsically unfair to men?

Nope. Although it may mean that some men who may have been otherwise employed under the normal (and demonstrably unfair) system may miss out on these jobs, it's not generally unfair to men because there is a clear trade-off in responsibilities occurring. This can be referenced by thinking carefully about what exactly happened in political gender topography when women finally achieved the right to vote during the suffrage movement. Using the same logic as "shortlists hurt men" we could conclude that women getting the vote reduced the political influence of men, decreasing their say, and harming their interests, in the shaping of the political landscape at a local and national level. But of course, (thankfully) very few people reason like this, simply because granting women the basic right to vote was more important than some vaguely defined loss in socio-economic "dominance" of men, from the maximum skew, to something less. It created a fairer society. To me, the employment situation is clearly analogous.

We are having to manually force equality by re-balancing employment potential slightly away from men and towards women. I hope you realise what a massive non-sequitur it is to say that this is harmful to men. We are gaining more freedom from the burdens of financial responsibility which have perennially plagued us, and increased opportunity for family time, childcare and other under-appreciated domestic activities. 

If you don't like this idea, ask yourself why. Is it because women belong in the kitchen?!? Is it because they should be having babies?!? Is it because they are "sluts and dumb bitches"?!?! Listen to yourself, and the shape of the world these answers represent. Is it possible to answer these points without coming across as a massive misogynist? It may reveal some uncomfortable truths in just how much faith you place in the traditional gender roles. 

In my experience in the field of science, I've never encountered a woman student, technician or teacher who wasn't eminently competent - organised, efficient, hard working and great to get along with. The same tired old sexist society that can't even see the problems in front of its own nose, is not the sort of society I want to live in, thanks very much Mr. Farage. And I'm not knocking meritocracy here, but just remember, it needs to be tempered against who is actually socio-economically capable of achieving that merit. 

Overall, it's clear Farage only subscribes to what I call "tick box, pseudo-equality" and has no real interest in egalitarianism, promoting race issues, women's issues, or improving anyone's lot in general...unless you're British of course. In which case he'll try, but almost certainly, ultimately, fail.

My only hopes for UKIP are that Farage is ousted by a more moderate underling, and that the party really does increase its proportion of females, which could well moderate its right-wing leanings.

My plea to all the UK voters is, think carefully before voting UKIP. I know the other Parties aren't gereat either, but there are worrying signs of UKIP's adherence to various seemingly unfalsifiable and damaging fantasies, namely climate change denial, pseudo-equality, and the "merits" of their own definition of "patriotism".  "Love Britain, vote UKIP"? More like "Longing to be part of a bigoted Britain so insular and xenophobic that it can't see just how intellectually incoherent it is? Vote UKIP!"

Science communication and "Scientism"

Of late there has been much discussion in the atheist/skeptic community about the notion of Scientism and its negative ramifications. I wanted to take a closer look at a couple of articles that caught my eye and pose the question of whether this can put down to, in part at least, a failure in communication.

Scientist, philosopher, atheist and skeptic Dr. Massimo Pigliucci has penned an interesting paper over on his blog and podcast site Rationally Speaking. Here: 

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/on-coyne-harris-and-pz-with-thanks-to.html

One of his main points is that the hypothesis that there is a God is not scientific, cannot be scientifically proven, and claiming that science can disprove it is unreasonable. He says that it's actually disrespectful to science to call the God hypothesis a "hypothesis" and that it is not scientific at all. The supernatural, or metaphysical realm is too vague, and can never be well enough defined. This is a valid point. The basic problem we are wrestling with here is whether morals should be philosophically determined (A), scientifically determined (B) or a mixture of both (C)- mainly philosophy, informed where relevant by the latest scientific understanding.

A) Traditional method. Limited by lack of objective information and unwanted influence by religious dogma.

B) The problem is it will never be only science which determines morality, as not everyone involved in the responsible fields of academia, legislature, judiciary or law enforcement have enough scientific appreciation. And we would always be applying our own philosophical angles on what science suggests. There really is no way to escape philosophy in this regard.

C) The most nuanced, realistic and best overall approach. Note that Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are a bit too dismissive of philosophical considerations,  something which I myself had already noted, which partly explains Massimo Pigliucci's comments as a philosopher (although I'm not suggesting he is merely hitting back at them for insulting his field).

Dr. Pigliucci makes the good point that the problem areas, namely, the dangers of postmodernistic relativism, and also the philosophical "justifications" for religious belief touted by apologists like Dr. William Lane Craig, can be well refuted by philosophy itself. The only point I would make is there always seems to be a ready torrent of (would-be) philosophers blowing religion's trumpet, but then, I guess, you get that just about everywhere and atheists come across it more than most.

The definition of "science" by some people is problematic. This is where we have a disconnect due to a lack of communication, in my view. Too many atheists are defining it generally too broadly. Philosophers and mathematicians are not really scientists - at least, the daily activities of their work do not correspond with those of empirical science. If you want to call science "how we know about anything" then sure, many fields would be included, but frankly, that's a problematic definition. As it's pointed out, if philosophy was "thinking about anything" then all activities would involve it. The main problem of this approach apart from its inaccuracy of course, is that the lack of focus devalues the genuine progress which is being made.

Elsewhere, another notable critic has been commenting on Scientism.

See Here
http://www.strangenotions.com/the-science-delusion/

Although scientism is undoubtedly problematic, Curtis White goes too far for me in laying the blame with science itself. It does seem strange, an atheist penning a book called "the science delusion".

Knowing what we think we know now, are questions such as "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and "What is our purpose on Earth" really such great questions to ask in the first place? White seems to be conflating the refusal of refuted religious arguments to lie down, and the fatigue some atheists feel at having to rehash it all over again for the believer's benefit, with a refusal to even consider these questions at all.

White makes the strange assertion that the whole world is science obsessed and slavishly bonded to its "ideology". Go out on the street and see if people agree! Oh yes they're all fixated on science! 

If only more people did take an interest in understanding real science, and a skeptical approach to outlandish claims, then the world would be a much better place. White bemoans how great intellectuals of the past like Voltaire and Thomas Paine and have been largely forgotten; but firstly, this is not the case amongst most atheists, and secondly as a symptom in the general population, this is a cultural artifact too complex to simply be laid at science's door. It can be partly explained by the modern "dumbing down" effect, and also simply by science becoming much more complicated than it was in centuries past. Finally, White doesn't seem to realise that many atheists are as troubled by the media's neuroscience claims as he is. Neuroscience is a field which even in my very limited forays I have witnessed much disagreement between those who study it.

It seems to me that laying the blame for all this at science's door is pure scapegoating. Again, I ask, is this really all down to science itself or rather the way that it is communicated and interpreted, then acted on through a specific cultural lens? It seems to me that it it is not science which poses the potential risk for people's wellbeing, rather unbridled capitalism. This critique should be directed at the way the media present information (in an unskeptical way, and insistent on "balance" between two claims when there is really only one logical position) and also the way that the corporate world does business.

Rational decision making is claimed to lead to the outcome of attempting to maximise profit at all costs. However, this is a perversion of the fact-value determination and falling into a trap of blinkers. It is entirely IRRATIONAL to NOT use an "all things considered" approach to determine the best course of action in any field, especially in business. 

I have yet to see the studies carried out on the reputation damage done to big business by their exploitative tactics, using sweat shops, not paying a living wage etc. Even if that does not conclude that profit-maximising at any cost is not damaging, and I do not concede that it would at this stage, then we STILL have to consider whether the whole approach passes muster on moral grounds.

It is only the B-Movie bad guy who seriously feels the kind of inexorable, magnetic pull of business towards the letter of his or her Shareholders' whims . If business is telling its leaders that this is really the way to operate, then there's your problem, right there. Again, this is an interpretation by business to answers it asked science for, and was given. It is anti-intellectual, and not scientific.
__
"Science" of Economics: "Studies of profitability show that companies earn most profit by maximising use of your worker's time and downwardly pressuring wages"
Corporate Business Interest: "Let's get our employees meditating on their own dime, 'cos we know, trickle down economics really works. Shucks!"
__
Evolutionary Psychology: "We got here by rape!"
Media: "Wow! Does that mean rape's not so bad?! Go misogynists, you were right all along!"
__

That was obviously just a caricature.

In conclusion, given that it is almost a truism to say that empirical science is NOT the only way in which humanity can be reliably informed about the world, or how we should act in it, anyone wholly subscribing to Scientism is not really thinking critically. Scientism is a real issue, being anti-intellectual and ridiculous by definition, has more adherents, or at least non-opponents, than you might think. And just because we may have found out the mechanism by which some aspect of physical reality operates, or understood why some facet of humanity is the way it is,  that does not mean we need to necessarily act in accordance with that finding. 

To do so would be to fall into the Naturalistic Fallacy. Nature sometimes acts in undesirable ways. Go figure. But with adequate philosophical considerations, we can effectively counteract this to behave in a more ethically robust way.

At last...a Pro women's cricket team!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cricket/26171943

Wow! This is great news. Good old jolly England.

Significant investment, bonuses and wage rises! This is what we want to see!

Cricket as a sport has once again shown itself to be a the forefront of development, with leading edge ideas in equality and egalitarianism . For a sport with such a stiff and stuffy image, it is really quite progressive!

As I have said before, cricket is a unifying sport and has the potential to bring people of different races, religions (and genders!) together and rise above all the petty bigotry, tradition and normativity that plague the world. Other sports like football are still mired in racism, homophobia and have barely even started any gender equality activity.

This is a superb decision by the ECB. All credit to them. We have now set the standard to all other cricketing nations.

All the best to our women's team, they thoroughly deserve this new investment and hopefully we will continue to see good young players come up through the grassroots system. We'll see that this should raise standards in the sport and allow the players to focus on their game when they don't need a day job any longer!

What a brilliant performance we have seen from the team this last year, recently retaining the Ashes after winning them in the summer. This is all in stark contrast of course to the men's side, who have been very disappointing all year round and were humiliated in the whole Australian series. Now there is turmoil in the dressing room, players and management alike all up and leaving. I can only hope for a period of consolidation in 2014 where we focus on developing a good new side for the future.

Becoming Pro is no small thing. Congratulations in particular must go to Clare Taylor and Charlotte Edwards, they have been awesome. Charlotte is the Sachin Tendulkar of the women's game, an exceptional record and a great woman. She is my Heroine!!

As I've said to the naysayers before, I don't deny that it may turn out that women's cricket will never reach the levels of the mens' game, nor attract that much interest and so not warrant the same investment in their cold, objective, market-forces driven world. My argument has never been that women's cricket offers a superior experience to men's. 

But even if all nay saying expectations come true, that does NOT mean that this was the wrong thing to do. It is only fair to give women an equal chance. It is always worth trying - and this is something I'm confident will be well worth giving a go. 

The madness of... The Kalam Cosmological Argument

Looking at my previous posts it doesn't seem like I've brought up the Kalam Cosmological Argument before. 

It's such a common retreat for the religious apologist and so widely used in debating circles both between big name philosophers and popular Youtubers, that I thought I'd put down some of my thoughts on the way it's used and whether it has any use or real value. This is not a strict logical treatment, more a flippant personal take on the bigger issues at play,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kal%C4%81m_cosmological_argument

The Argument itself is presented as:

Classical argument
1. Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
2. The universe has a beginning of its existence; 
Therefore:
3. The universe has a cause of its existence.

-----

Of course, the conclusion that an apologist would like to draw from this line of reasoning is that God would be the only possible cause of the Universe. Lets look at the implicit assumptions in the argument and where they fall down.

Philosophically, cause can be broken down into 2 forms. First, there is the material cause, that is, the "stuff" that the effect was brought about from. So the material cause of a statue would be the stone it was carved from. And secondly, we have the efficient cause, or rather the agent or will that brings about the effect. So in the sculpture analogy, it would be the sculptor. A bit of chemistry, as is my want : in a chemical reaction, the material cause is the reactants and the efficient cause is thermodynamics (assuming it goes to completion).

So for virtual particles popping in and out of existence on the quantum scale, we have a clear example of a material cause (the quantum field) but no efficient cause (as the process is random and cannot be predicted). 

Better people than I (and I mean real scientists and physicists) have never encountered, and cannot think how of the opposite situation - a way how something could occur without a material cause, but only an efficient one.

It is like "willing" something into existence out of thin air (actually, worse than that - at least air contains some molecules!). But this is exactly what the Kalam suggests, and what its proponents are assuming: that an efficient cause alone is enough to affect colossal change. They are shooting themselves in the foot by holding to the starting point of "nothing": not only is it not known to exist, but it is also not known if it is even possible for an efficient cause to be sufficient to bring about the start of the Universe without material to work with. It's a logical impossibility, that God is not supposed to be able to accomplish by the apologist's own admission.

Problems with premise 1
The premise has clear exceptions - radioactive nuclear decay and the appearance of virtual particles on a quantum scale. These events are random and cannot be predicted. They have no observable prior requisite. Apologists would argue that on some level these events are "caused" by the very existence of the quantum field (or quantum vacuum), but personally I think that's stretching "cause" a bit. 

It is also clear that the use of wording "everything that has a beginning of its existence" is setting up a subgroup of things which don't have a beginning to their existence, which can then be posited at the end of the argument as the ultimate cause. 

However, the inclusion of God in this subgroup is unjustified. There could be many more plausible naturalistic causes, such as a black hole in another universe, or the collision of two "branes" in multiverse theory. We don't currently have any tangible evidence of something which doesn't have a beginning actually existing, although for something naturalistic it could well be the case by the standard model, but I'll discuss that next.

Problems with premise 2
Although the steady-state theory has now been discredited and we are pretty sure that the Big Bang created the known universe about 13.7 billion years ago, there is some indication that something existed "before" that event. Indeed, the big bang required a singularity or some other similar state to act upon. I use the term "before" in scare quotes since the notion of time breaks down at the very first moments of the universe's existence - I discussed in a previous post about how entropy drives the arrow of time - well with no space for quanta of energy to occupy, there can be no entropy and no time, so I just mean causally before in some sense. 

We don't know that the universe had a beginning to its entire existence, only that the expansion had a beginning - it may have always had to have been created from the available materials. 

See the "BBST" below.

Problems with premise 3
Well neither premises 1 nor 2 hold, so 3 does not follow. As I've said, only an efficient cause affecting change, and not only a material cause, is the one which is in doubt, but the one which apologists cling to as the truth. As God.

Something from "nothing"
As their argument is predicated on God, an efficient cause, who must have pre-dated everything else, religious apologists insist that there was no material cause to the universe - hence creation ex nihilo. However, it's not clear if "nothing", as defined by a lack of anything, could even exist in the first place. 
It's certainly not likely. There is of course only one way for it to exist -as the introduction of anything will make it no longer nothing. And anything means even one virtual particle. 

This makes the existence of nothing incredibly unlikely, statistically speaking, and if mutiverse theory is correct at all, I think there may be reason to suspect that nothing is, in fact, impossible to observe as it cannot be present in the same frame of reference as any observer. It may well then be unfalsifiable - and unfalsifiability is a big red flag for any theory. The most you can say about it is that it is mathematically possible. 

Lawrence Krauss presents the evidence on the creation of the Universe brilliantly in his book "A Universe from Nothing". Not though, that the physicists' definition of nothing (the closest thing we can observe to "not anything", the vacuum of space) is different from the traditional philosophical definition of nothing, "not anything" which the theists refer to. 

In fact, Krauss' book has angered many theists whose most common cry is "That's not nothing!" However, as I've explained, there is "nothing" (LOL) to say that nothing could even actually exist, nor that it was the state from which the Universe arose. Theists' stubborn insistence that creation must have been ex nihilo is dogmatic, neither logically necessary nor empirically probable, and quite possibly misplaced.

The contemporary argument is often expounded by noted Christian apologist and philosopher, Dr. William Lane Craig, whose name I shall abbreviate as WLC. He applies the following additional premises.

Argument based on the impossibility of an actual infinite
1. An actual infinite cannot exist.
2. An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.

Argument based on the impossibility of the formation of an actual infinite by successive addition
1. A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.
2. The temporal series of past events is a collection formed by successive addition.
3. Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

"Problems" with Infinity

WLC seems willing to go to any length to try and deny that infinity could be real. His equivocation of "infinite properties" with "nothing" in relation to the BBST is patently absurd. It is self-contradictory: if infinite density is really synonymous with nothing, and the Universe was preceded by nothing, then it follows that the Universe was preceded by infinite density, and therefore infinity DOES exist.

In fact, it's extremely unlikely that the Universe was preceded by nothing. The current favourite theory is probably Quantum Nucleation. Feel free to look it up for more details.

He also insists the privileged reference frame, which predicates the Kalam, must exist. When faced with the demonstrable evidence of time dilation and length contraction, disproving the privileged reference frame, he asserts that these phenomena only "appear" to happen, but do not actually happen. That's obtuse in the extreme, when confronted with the empirical evidence. Metaphysically absurd, one might even say.

It can be demonstrated that an actual infinite can theoretically, or mathematically exist. But of course, it can't be physically shown. I love how religious apologists try and use this as a win for them, all the while ignoring the fact that there is the exact same problem for God. Us atheists have been waiting for quite a while for God to show up. All it would take would be for him to show up with something like this:

The Vogons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1WomfhjyVM

Additionally, an omniscient deity would already know what would prove it for most people. Not just inside their head, but in objective reality. For comparison, what would it take to prove to the theists that God didn't exist? In fact , we may be near the closest point we'll ever be to doing just that, (can you point to God, exactly?) and many don't, and can't even see it.

Privileged reference frames
The A and B theories of time are opposing models which differ on the point of whether time is objective, i.e. has a privileged reference frame or not. The accepted theory is B-time, as supported by special relativity: simultaneity is always relative - it may take extra plank seconds for adjacent molecules to interact, for instance. Another way of saying this is that time is not absolute: the first Planck second for particle B may be the 2nd Planck second for particle A. Since time and space are connected in the construct of Spacetime, causality spreads out from a point and cannot be instantaneous.

WLC, in his Kalam arguments, attempts to circumvent this impassable problem by invoking the Neo-Lorentzian view of Relativity, which states that the privileged reference frame does exist, and supports A-time. But hold on. Would you believe that in this archaic model, a concept as nebulous as "the ether" is postulated as central to the privileged reference frame. Make no mistake, this theory is widely discredited. 

Since the ether cannot be detected in principle, is is unfalsifiable and unscientific. Well, since WLC has called the B-theory of time "Theologically objectionable" then it MUST be false... ;-)

BBST
Let's get this straight - no-one knows for sure what happened before the first quantum moment of time (the shortest length of time possible is called a Plank second, 10 -43 seconds). The Big Bang Singularity Theorem predicts infinite density, temperature etc. at this moment. However, this assumes that General Relativity holds, but it probably breaks down. Quantum mechanics would in fact gives us a better idea - specifically, quantum gravity, and how it relates to General Relativity, needs to be understood before the origins of the Universe can be modelled with more confidence. The BBST is widely discredited in the scientific community, but is the basis of the Kalam.

Furthermore, even if we did concede that the BBST was correct (which we don't) , it does NOT follow that it was preceded by nothing. As I argued above, a perpetual state of infinites which created the Universe by natural processes is more likely than BBST.

Ultimately, the Kalam is based on pseudoscientific thinking and an unfalsifiable premise, on top of the other problems noted above. But some apologists are so desperate to cling to their God belief as being "reasonable" that they are willing to be pretty unreasonable in doing so. 

The presuppositionalists at least, openly admit that if faced with sound evidence that God did not create the Universe, they would still believe. That, I'm afraid, is holding to something unfalsifiable in principle, just like the Kalam Cosmological Argument's foundations.

Thanks to Counter Apologist for much of the detail in this post. Please check out his videos and subscribe to his feed on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/CounterApologist?feature=watch