We officially have a 2-tier legal system

I find it somewhat difficult to believe that this is for real. Shamso Miah broke another man's jaw over a dispute in a bank queue. He was let off because...

Ms Booth told Miah that violence had to be taken seriously, but said she would suspend his prison sentence because he was a religious person and had not been in trouble before.

She added: "You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."

I think I said this yesterday but: seriously? Compare "You are a freemason, and you know this is not acceptable behaviour", "You went to St Johns, and you know this is not acceptable behaviour"...

The "not been in trouble before" part is relevant, and is the *only* part of that sentence that is relevant. As far as I'm aware (from doing a little reading some while ago) religious conviction is essentially completely independent of propensity to commit crimes. Cherie Booth, presumably, has read some more recent research.

Zeus is a nincompoop

If this was published in Ireland, I might have just committed a crime. According to a recent clarification of their blasphemy laws, someone would be guilty of blasphemy if:

"he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion."

This is seriously, seriously stupid. An Irish atheist society has challenged it in the obvious way, publishing quotes from Jesus, Mark Twain and Ian Paisley among others which could all be interpreted as blasphemous and criminal under the new interpretation of the law. In fact, if combined with this sort of decision to protect non-religions, or with the utterly nonsensical decision from Grainger vs. Nicholson than environmental beliefs should be protected under religious discrimination laws, it could make perfectly sensible, even morlally necessary decisions illegal.

It's a stupid law. I'm not sure if that qualifies as blasphemous

Ridiculous Laws being taken to their obvious conclusion part 3,298,674

A judge has apparently decided that being really, really bad at leading murder investigations is not sufficient reason to prevent someone from being put in charge of murder investigations. At least not if they're really, really bad at their job because of "religious" reasons. A policeman is suing the department that fired him for proposing the use of psychics in investigations because, apparently, his belief in psychics is a religious belief:

Judge Peter Russell said that the case had merit because his Spiritualist views "have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance" to be covered by the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.

Maybe next time someone gets a question wrong in one of my probability classes, they should sue me because believing that all of the outcomes in the sample space are equally likely is part of their religion?

This is a problem I've mentioned before: it's very, very difficult to protect "genuine" religions from persecution without also protecting the religions which are even more obviously silly. Religious discrimination laws are a licence to believe whatever you like, and to claim legal protection for acting on that belief: essentially, a licence to do whatever you like at work, as long as you can convince enough other people that doing that thing is "holy". Silly laws lead to silly court cases like this.

CPS takes ridiculous law to its logical conclusion

According to the Mail on Sunday, the CPS has decided to treat Scientology in the same way as other religions when it comes to protections under the Race and Religious Hatred Act.

Now, don't get me wrong - Scientology is a really, really stupid religion - for God's sakes, it was founded by a man who said (something like)

"You don't get rich writing science fiction, if you want to get rich, you start a religion"

For more on this quote, see here - to quote that page:

To summarize: we have nine witnesses: Neison Himmel, Sam Merwin, Sam Moskowitz, Theodore Sturgeon, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Harlan Ellison, and the three unnamed witnesses of Robert Vaughn Young. There is some confusion and doubt about one of them (Sam Moskowitz). Two are reported via Russel Miller: one is reported via Mike Jittlov: one reported in his autobiography; one reported in an affidavit; and one reported to me in person. The reports describe different events, meaning that Hubbard said it perhaps six times, in six different venues - definitely not just once. And the Church's official disclaimer is now reportedly a flat lie.

It's a really, really stupid religion, it has some utterly ridiculous beliefs as part of its credo, and it does some pretty nasty things to people - but that's not my point here (there are other people far more qualified to comment on the stupidity and cupidity of Scientologists than I am. My point is that if you have laws which explicitly protect religious belief, then you're going to have to use them to protect "religions" like Scientology.

There's no evidence whatever that aliens flew to Earth in DC-8's, but then there's no evidence whatever that people can survive for three days in the belly of a whale, or that any of these things actually happened.

Taken at face value, almost all religious beliefs are ridiculous, and since religions don't demand any actual evidence for their beliefs, just about the only way to distinguish between a religion and a cult is that a religion has more members. This is something I've written about before, and I think it's quite important, and often missed by other people who write about this sort of thing. Once you start to officially recognise one form of unsupported nonsense, you're on a slippery slope to having to officially recognise whatever form of unsupported nonsense people happen to want to believe in tomorrow.

The Four Horsemen

How cool is this? Dawkins, Dennet, Harris and Hitchens all together in a room, having a conversation about religion. Hitchens is almost as arrogant as I would be if I was as clever as him and had read as much as he has. Dawkins appears to be terribly shy, but always have something to say. Dennet clearly knows he knows what he's talking about and he's comfortable just saying it, while Harris is probably just glad to be in the same room as the others (although everything he says is definitely worth listening to).

Does anyone believe in miracles?

So, a few years ago, the people at the Gilbert Deya Ministry were all over the news, because they'd been stealing babies from poor couples in Africa and giving them to rich Westerners. There's an interesting debate to be had about whether or not their should be a legitimate market in babies (I tend towards yes, but it's tricky), but that's not what I want to go into here. The interesting thing about the Gilbert Deya Ministries story is that they claimed their babies were "miracle babies" - that they had been sent by God, and hence there could be no abduction charges and no crime. Of course, the court thought this was very silly, as does everyone else I've ever talked to about it, but I suppose the real question is, why is it any sillier than any other miracle story?

People are willing to believe that some bloke 2000 years ago died and then came back to life a few days later - just for a week or so. They're willing to believe that the bread and wine they eat in Church somehow turns itself into his body and blood. They're willing to believe that for some utterly obscure reason God chooses to send his most important prophecies via some peasant children in the middle of Portugal. They're willing to believe that the Sun danced in the sky, or that statues actually cry milk. So why aren't they willing to believe that God really does create babies and give them to the childless couples who go to the Gilbert Deya Ministry looking for help.

One obvious reason is that there is a perfectly valid rational explanation for where the children came from, so invoking a miracle is not necessary. Apart from the fact that this isn't all that convincing - there are usually some pretty valid rational explanations for anything that gets classified as a "miracle" - I think the best response is - so what? If God really does perform miracles, why should he restrict himself to only doing things that are outside rational explanation? Why shouldn't he just create babies out of thin air in Kenya, which bear no resemblance to the parents they were created for, and rather a strong resemblance to people who've recently had their children kidnapped? After all, he works in mysterious ways.

More importantly, if you *do* believe in miracles, at all, in any way, how do you start
to argue with people like the Gilbert Deya Ministry? They say "it's a miracle". You say "No it's not". They say "Prove it", and I have no idea how you can ever repond. If some things *are* miracles, how is it ever possible to prove that anything isn't?