Freedom From Religion

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Sep 302008
 

The phrase “Religious Freedom” or ‘Freedom of Religion” often comes up, but I would like to see the phrase “Freedom From Religion” used a little more. This is going to sound a bit like an attack on religion itself, but it is not intended as such. Everyone is free to practice the religion of their choice … or none at all.

The key is the end of that last sentence – no religion at all. We’re all too often besieged with symbols of religion and people assume we want to hear about their favourite fictitious god. Certainly the UK is nowhere as bad as the USA where atheists can be subject to treatment that amounts to persecution even including physical and verbal abuse merely for voicing their lack of belief.

But that does not mean the UK is properly secular in public life. Schools can be a little too religious; I do not mind my taxes being used to pay for the education of children, but I do mind that it is used to pay for the religious indoctrination of children. Too many schools are “faith schools” and are at least partially funded by the taxpayer.

In many cases … particularly for primary schools where the most impressionable children are taught, there is little choice other to send children to such schools. The Church of England still “owns” (we won’t worry too much about the fine details of this ownership) 25% of all primary schools. Rather creepily similar to the Jesuit saying “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man”.

Of course there is nothing deliberately sinister about the CoE schools these days. Long gone are the times when one could be beaten for expressing views even slightly atheistic, but there is still a distinct odour of the Christian religion about such places. One school even boasts of providing a “christian education”.

Moving onto Universities, and you will find the education considerably less influenced by religion as these places are supposed to be serious institutes of learning. But if you have a close look at who is employed at these places you will often find a chaplain or six. Now these chaplains probably are not going to ram their religion down your throat, and are to a certain extent simply a counselling service with a religious twist. The funny thing is that both of the Universities I checked also have independent counselling services.

So what we have here is a special religious counselling service that only certain people are qualified for employment with … just christians (or perhaps people who believe in other gods). Now religious students (and staff) could probably do with a little support from a University, but what is wrong with ordinary counsellors just pointing them at local churches, mosques and the like ? Again I’m not entirely sure why my taxes should go towards paying the salaries of people whose principal talent is talking to imaginary beings.

But far worse are the more in your face examples of religion. The church sign that says “The Wages of Sin is Death”, the kerbside evangelist who harranges you about being saved, the smug Christian who insists that all unbelievers will go straight to hell and suffer eternal damnation. At best this is merely irritating; at worst it consitutes a kind of verbal abuse.

Yet religion seems to have a privileged position in our society … it is considered wrong to criticise the beliefs of others. But why is not also considered wrong to criticise the unbelief of others ? I do not believe, do not want to be preached at, and certainly do not want to see my tax money spent on supporting religious belief in any way whatsoever.

Banks, Government Intervention, and Capitalism

 Politics  No Responses »
Sep 202008
 

Lehman Brothers collapse, Northern Rock run, HBOS takeover. All were in theory good stable banks suffering slightly because of bad debt (US subprime) which may be why the financial markets are so twitchy about them. Even though the markets were in large part responsible for the takeover of HBOS (nothing apparently wrong with them – they just suffered an inexplicable share price collapse).

Now the US government is promising to throw hundreds of billions at the problem by buying up bad debt on top of the trillion dollars already used to protect the banking system. Probably a very sensible move.

But it is slightly peculiar that a freemarket government (and a particularly keen one at that) is bailing out private companies. Perhaps banking is a special case; after all we have seen a housing crisis in the US cause financial panic world-wide, even in industry sectors that have very little to do with banking. But if banking is a special case, it needs special treatment.

The traditional view is that intervention to save banks is wrong, because to rescue banks would encourage banks to take risks they would otherwise avoid. There would be some truth in that if in fact only banks with poor practices failed and the people responsible for bad practices did in fact suffer. Well, HBOS only “failed” (actually got taken over at a rock bottom price) because their share price collapsed for no good reason and because other banks may have been reluctant to lend to a bank in that situation. Lehman Brothers? Well their CEO isn’t suffering too much … he was paid a $22 million bonus last year, which is more than enough to last any reasonable person a lifetime.

Going back to the root causes of the current problems, we can see that it was initially caused by a great deal of irresponsible lending done in the expectation that with rising prices, there were huge profits to be made. Indeed the US is investigating numerous cases of fraud committed by the lenders.

Over the last thirty or so years, the trend has been to remove regulation from the banking sector to give it more freedom on the grounds that regulation was stifling the free market in its quest to make ever greater profits. As it has turned out the greed and irresponsibility of some lenders has shown that bankers cannot be trusted to behave responsibly without strong regulation or close supervision.

First of all, because banking is world-wide, any action by governments has to be done on a world-wide basis to avoid distortions in the banking market where a bank in a country with less stringent regulation would have an unfair advantage.

Secondly because bailing out bad banks has been and will always be so costly, banks should pay a higher rate of tax than other companies.

Finally each bank must have a supervising member on its board of directors who would attempt to identify bad practices and stop them.

Max Mosley Is Innocent

 Politics  No Responses »
Jul 242008
 

Or something like that.

To be more precise he has won his case against the “News of the World” for invasion of privacy.

The interesting thing about this decision despite the fact that it is not a landmark decision (previous court cases claiming invasion of privacy have been won in the UK), is that the complaints of journalists about it. They claim that the defacto “privacy law” that this is pointing to will undermine serious investigative journalism.

It may do.

But the media industry has long known that the actions of the muckrakers and pornographers of the gutter press is hugely unpopular with the thinking public. They have long had means of controlling themselves through an industry body, and have failed to control the seamier side of so-called journalism. State control of news media is abhorrent, but a lack of effective self-regulation will lead to that.

Of course the public has to take some of the blame here too. We need to stop buying newspapers whose principle content involves unwarranted invasions of privacy. Whilst many (including myself) don’t think much of Max Mosley’s actions in his private life, it should remain his personal business unless he is up to something that is illegal or has a significant impact on his public work.

Boycott the gutter press!

The Death Sentence

 Politics  1 Response »
Apr 272008
 

I have been reading a book that has renewed my interest in the use of the death sentence in various countries in the world. Not a great book by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been thinking about the use of the death sentence for many years.

After all I live in a country that refuses to use the death sentence and has for many years. Despite the fact that re-introducing the death sentence would be quite popular with the general population. Politicians have taken a moral stand that the death sentence is wrong no matter how popular it may be. Seeing politicians take a moral stand is something that by itself is quite unusual and something to be encouraged.

There are many good reasons why the death sentence can be thought of as wrong; there are even a few good reasons why the death sentence can be though of as fully justified. This post is about just one overpowering reason why it is wrong to impose the death sentence.

If it can be wrong for one man (or woman) to kill another on their own, why is any less wrong for a gang of people to kill another ? It may be argued that the state is not just some gang, but it is still a collection of men and women acting on behalf of a society. Each one of those individuals is prohibited from killing, but as a whole they are not ?

If it is wrong for an individual to kill another individual, then it is wrong for the state to kill any individual

I Smell Snake Oil …

 Politics  No Responses »
Apr 182008
 

I recently discovered one of the most entertaining web reads I’ve come across for ages … Bad Science which is a site dedicated to pointing out where the (mostly media) uses “Bad Science” or falls victim to “Bad Science”. The author (Ben Goldacre) is a medical doctor so most of the criticisms are in relation to medicine rather than science in general. But the debunking of rubbish media reports on (mostly) medical issues is worthwhile and done in an entertaining way.

It is interesting that many of the more foolish reports in the media have to do with bad statistics rather than bad science itself. That is I suppose not too surprising, as statistics seems to be widely misunderstood.

I have the advantage that many years ago I spent some time studying statistics, and many media reports have the effect of making my inner statistician jump up and down in fury shouting “Bullshit” over and over again. Fortunately he doesn’t shout too loudly or I’d run the risk of being shut away in a room with nice soft walls.

Statistics don’t lie, but they don’t always say what we think they do

I’m going to make use of an example relating to cannabis and an article publish by that paragon of excellent and accurate reporting, the Daily Mail. The article itself is here … scary isn’t it?

A report that has statistics that says that people who smoke cannabis have a 41% higher risk of schizophrenia, indicates that cannabis smokers are more likely to have schizophrenia than the general population. That doesn’t mean that cannabis causes mental health issues; that is an untested hypothesis. A quick uneducated guess at a number of possible reasons why includes :-

  • Cannabis use increases the risk of mental health problems (yes it is possible).
  • People with mental health problems are more likely to use cannabis than others.
  • Cannabis use makes existing mental health problems worse.
  • There is no link between cannabis use and mental health problems; the correlation is accidental.
  • The study that found a correlation between cannabis use and mental health problems is flawed and there is in fact no such correlation.

One of the biggest mistakes anyone can make with statistics is to take a link between two variables (a correlation) and assume that one variable causes another (cannabis use causes mental health issues). This is known as “Correlation does not imply causation”; stealing a Wikipedia example, there is a correlation between going to bed with shoes on and waking up with a headache. Sleeping with shoes on does not cause headaches, but drinking copious quantities of alcohol makes it more likely that you will sleep with your shoes on, and far more likely you will wake with a headache.

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