We’ve certainly had some interesting weather here in the UK for the last 3 weeks. The week before Christmas we had a hefty snow dump of the kind I’ve not seen in my almost 9 years living here, and it disappeared enough to be able to resume normal activity just in time for Christmas Day. It required just a few minutes of digging to make two wheel ruts to enable me to be able to park again when I got back from visiting family.

Then last week we got another dump that was easily double that of the earlier one. It was forecast for Tuesday evening, and I made it home just in time to still be able to drive up the spur incline to my house and into my garage. If I’d been 15-20 minute later, I’d either have had to dig my way in or park on the street somewhere and risk the car being battered by one of the two nutters on my street who refuse to acknowledge adverse weather conditions (normally because a couple of people will always go outside to dig him out of his predicament). I had 30cm of snow in my back garden following Tuesday’s snow dump and, although it got as high as 4°C yesterday, it hasn’t really budged. The 30cm of fluffy snow has reduced to 10-15cm of crystalline iciness (a bit like an Icee) with a few centimetres of solid, compacted ice underneath.

If you think I’m being melodramatic, the BBC website has created Special Report: Frozen Britain to cover the event, as it’s such a rare occurrence — particularly in the southern half of the country — and it’s being compared to the previous worst cold-weather event almost 50 years ago. Road grit is running out, gas for heating is running low, snow chains and snow shovels are sold out, and the local shops have empty shelves as the delivery lorries can’t reach them (it’s a hilly area).

The plus side is that my freezer is gradually being emptied of older food that would normally have newer stuff placed on top of it, the cupboards are having a good clean out, I’m saving 50 miles of fuel and up to two hours each weekday, and I’m able to be just as productive from home as I am in the office thanks to stable power and Internet, VPN access and voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony.

And the neighbourhood kids have been loving it. They’ve been sledging like mad for the last week, the valley has resounded with their laughter and fun, and down by the bridleway, someone had built a huge snowman complete with snow sofa and footrests, giving people something (albeit chilly) to sit on and admire. In this age of parents locking their children indoors for fear of bogey men: good for them!

I’m going to assume that you don’t know who on earth Tim Minchin is. And that you’re unaware of how cool a musician, comedian and skeptic that he is. And by doing that, I’m going to assume that you’ve never heard me wax lyrical about him before.

To address that travesty, I strongly exhort you to go and watch Canvas Bags and Storm. Done? Now you know Tim.

Today Tim has released a longer studio version of a track from his Ready for This? album/DVD onto iTunes, his Christmas song called White Wine in the Sun (it’s also available online from HMV, We7, Play.com, TuneTribe and Tesco). Those of you who have grown up (or even holidayed) in a hot climate in December will know that roasts, hot eggnog, and the other trappings of the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice as celebrated for thousands of years (well before Christianity co-opted them, of course), are unimaginable most years. Instead, such locations typically go for a barbecue, cold meats, salads and cold drinks.

Hence… drinking white wine in the sun.

If you’re one of the few people reading this who don’t have the album and want to try-before-you-buy, have a listen to the live version of the song here:

Tim Minchin – White Wine in the Sun (live album version)

Now that you’ve done that, please help make it reach the #1 position in your location’s music charts by buying the song on iTunes and if you are on Facebook, join the Tim Minchin for a Top 20 Place in the Christmas Charts! group.

So why am I shamelessly shilling one of Tim’s songs? One of the answers is two (or is it one?) words: X-Factor.

How sick are you of Simon Cowell’s latest money-magnet protégé being pumped, pushed and manipulated through to #1 in the Christmas charts year after year? Does anyone over the age of five actually think that these airbrushed, possibly Auto-Tuned, divas are actually achieving this through hard work, songwriting, talent and skill? (If you do, then you’re banned from this blog).

For the rest of you… please consider making a stand this year. Yes, I’d like you to consider White Wine in the Sun because it’s moving and honest, but also because big business has hijacked the music industry. The pre- and early-teen market are their cash cows, but what about the rest of us? I’m 37 and am limited to Scuzz or Kerrang!, Planet Rock, ClassicFM, streaming facilities like Last.fm and Spotify, and my own music collection… commercial and popular radio seems to have become largely a minefield of poo interspersed with a few islands of goodness. There’s awesome music out there being made every day, but manufactured bands are given the most airtime.

While it’s true that manufactured bands have been around forever (The Monkees and Sex Pistols are two examples) and, while they sometimes contribute positively to music and culture, they’re not even playing the same game as their contemporaries (such as The Rolling Stones and The Clash) who built their names by raw talent, long hours and hard graft. How can a bedroom warbler get onto a talent show, spend a few weeks under the spotlight, impress a mogul and his minions, and suddenly be accelerated into super-stardom? That’s not a music industry — it’s an assembly line.

If you decide that you like Tim’s work, please also consider purchasing one of his excellent CDs or DVDs. You’ll laugh and you’ll enjoy.

Edit: Added links to the new track from various online stores.

This post may cause trouble. There’s an issue that’s been bothering me since before I began to self-identify as an atheist (among other labels that we pigeonholers of a people like to place upon ourselves and others) that bothered me then, but does so even more now.

I have a problem with atheists who denigrate people of faith just because they hold a faith. There, I’ve said it.

My mother’s uncle turns 80 in January and he’s a Methodist lay-minister, hobbyist philosopher, critical thinker with many interests, and is a lovely man with whom I get on famously. Or did, until Easter when he saw the Atheist Bus Campaign sticker on the back of my car. His immediate, unthinking reaction was to turn to me and utter, “Oh, so you’re one of those?” By “those” I assumed he meant an atheist, so I said yes. No big deal, asked and answered simply and matter-of-factly, like “Do you like grapes?” and “Yes.” It’s now almost December and we’ve only just recently managed to establish dialogue that doesn’t include preloaded assumptions. It’s not that he wouldn’t talk to me anymore, but rather that everything he said, did and thought regarding me was now coloured with negative expectation: a shit-coloured filter.

As it was, this evening’s conversation started with his enquiry about me attending Christmas lunch with them, as I’ve done most years since moving to England. For some reason his expectation was that now I am the A-word I’d not participate in “Christian festivals” and even be antagonistic towards them. After pointing out that on one hand nearly all Christian festivals were pagan festivals long before the Catholic church came along and usurped them, and on the other hand I recognise that it’s human nature to participate in ceremonies and rituals of the passage of time, seasons and events, and such things possibly pre-date religion. He’s mollified, and Christmas is back on. Yay, status quo.

This brings me to the point of this post. The reality-based community with which I identify are more likely to use — and use successfully — logic, reason and critical thinking in arguments against everything ranging from philosophy to religion. And it’s wonderful. I mean it.

But there a section of this community that not only antagonises people of faith (I can intellectually understand this, if not agree entirely with) and often does so by using logical fallacies and cognitive biases, some of which include straw man, ad hominem, false dichotomy, sampling bias, and bias blind spot. (You’ll probably find unintended examples of these throughout this blog). I doubt you’ll find many atheists who won’t challenge religious fundamentalism and zealotry with gusto, facts, science and logic. And rightly so. But to extend that a little, a number of atheists cannot understand how any otherwise rational and intelligent people could possibly also have religious faith — particularly if they work in a science profession — so they must clearly be deluded or poor thinkers.

And then this argument often rears its head: the religious moderate is as bad, if not worse, than the fundamentalist. The rationale for this often being that moderation allows the presentation of an acceptable face of a brutal, primitive set of dogmas, or facilitates that faith’s entry through an otherwise closed door. As if, somehow, they’re all as bad as each other. To anyone who’s thought about this seriously for a moment, this is clearly not true. Yes, there are monsters in positions of power in any religion, just as there is throughout the general laity, but to caricature every member of a faith in that way is disgusting. It makes a mockery of the critical thinking and logical arguments that person holds to be valuable and worthwhile, because that person has exercised none of it.

My great-uncle has reacted and behaved the way he has with me because of the public face of modern atheism, with its often total disregard for the feelings and sensibilities of the average person — despite the fact he’s never seen any of those negative, judgemental or intolerant qualities in me. In its zeal to slap down the worst of faith and try to stem the tide of stupid overtaking the world, that form of atheistic expression is harming normal people. Those may be people who simply have not yet reached a point in their lives where they’re able to objectively reflect upon the inconsistencies and logic problems of their own faith when compared to the world around them.

There is something of which I am unequivocally certain: this perceived New Atheist “all guns blazing” approach isn’t going to work.

It’s the argumentative, brow-beating equivalent of the outlawing of religion in China and the former USSR. How can it possibly work against faiths that get excited about martyrdom? And I’m not just talking about Islam here: most major religions revel in the chance to play the oppressed, downtrodden and beaten servant of their god. They simply say, “I will practise my faith regardless, and any punishment I may receive will be my sacrifice to <insert deity here>, which will reap me rewards in <insert afterlife here>!”

Yes, it’s awful that in the 21st century billions of the world’s population are still slaves to Bronze Age superstitions. But no, screeching like a banshee at your neighbour isn’t going to make them suddenly say, “You know what… you’ve been insulting everything I’ve ever valued for years now, but I see it now: you’re right!” Just because something may be provably wrong, it doesn’t mean that an otherwise intelligent person will see it that way — you’re staring in the face of cognitive dissonance.

So am I advocating appeasement? Certainly not. But a large number of worldwide scientific community do not consider themselves atheists. Are they to be excluded from scientific endeavour? Again, certainly not. The same is true of the average member of the public. Religions and superstitions may be laughable and ridiculous, but they kill thousands of people every day and are not to be underestimated in terms of their importance to the people that hold them. And some of those people may love you and be hurt deeply whenever, by inference, you call them imbeciles.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what the solution is — or even if there is one, at least that doesn’t involve totalitarianism — but I am certain that the lumping of people like my great-uncle in the same basket as a religious terrorist is wrong. And yet I see it every day in the atheist blogs I read, and in the other atheistic and even new media I consume: the deliberate misrepresentation of members of a faith as if they’re all as bad as the worst public figure in that faith. It’s wrong and it has to stop.

Church of England minister Ed Tomlinson has made the news in recent days — see the Times and Mail websites for examples, and a pro-religious perspective — with an entry on his church’s blog lamenting the increasing secularisation of funerals, and his own conflicted emotions of conducting an event at which he feels unwanted, or where he feels his beliefs are undervalued. Here’s is an example:

I have stood at the crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with “I Did It My Way” blaring out across the speakers!

To be brutally honest I can think of a hundred better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth. What is the point of my being present if spiritually unwanted?

Aside from it being an inappropriately personal rant on a church website, he seems unaware that such events are not about him.

The Problem
In his zeal for ensuring that his religion has more involvement in the lives of the people in his community, he appears to have forgotten that a funeral is about the dead person and their family and friends. Not him. Not his god. It’s to pay respects to the departed, to honour their life, and to give their family and friends a point of closure, something to remember them by. Period.

That we have, throughout time, as a species attributed certain things to invisible and unprovable forces is neither here nor there. To my knowledge (I’m not an anthropologist), mankind has always marked the death of one of its own with respect. Before Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, or any of the religious rites, forms and doctrines we remember today (to say nothing of those lost to Prehistory — the 190,000+ years of modern Homo sapiens history pre-dating modern religions). “People of the cloth” weren’t a necessity then for the same reason they aren’t now, however any humanist will recognise the part of mankind that benefits from certain customs, habits and rituals. Having a wise or respected person (or elder) officiate at the departure ceremony of a member of the tribe maintains a sense of belonging, continuation and comfort.

But you don’t need a degree in theology, a seminary certificate, or a special book for it. You just need compassion, understanding and respect. I’m afraid the blog post about which I’m writing shows an absence of all of these qualities, instead replacing them with lesser qualities that will likely have hurt and offended people who have recently lost loved ones. I wonder how the families of his recent funeral ceremonies feel at his slap in their faces?

That we may have an opinion is not necessarily a justification for publishing it.

To make things worse, it appears that there have been some negative reactions to criticism of (Father? Vicar? Reverend? Minister? Let’s go with Mister…) Mr Tomlinson’s blog entry. Margaret, a humanist celebrant and the person behind Dead Interesting, posted a reply entitled They’re not doing it his way, to which some of his defenders have responded angrily. That will be their self-avowed cheek-turning at work, then — or is it the eye removal? It depends on whether you think that those who don’t share your beliefs deserve to be treated like human beings, I suppose.

The Solution

Part of the problem that Mr Tomlinson has unwittingly illustrated is that there is not widespread understanding that those who wish to have a non-religious funerals can easily achieve just that. He states the following:

I am equally troubled that pastoral care is being left in the hands of those whose main aim is to make money. And I am further concerned that an opportunity for evangelism is slipping through our fingers.

Atheists and secularists might delight in this fact but is it really the victory they imagine?

The implication here is that non-religious alternatives are about making money (we’ll ignore the collection plates, donation envelopes, tithing sermons, Direct Debit facilities and Gift Aid awareness present at church services), when in fact there are humanist celebrants and others who often have a normal career but spend their spare time performing weddings, namings, funerals, memorials and other events that provide a non-religious alternative to those offered by religious organisations. I understand that there are also people doing this full-time, though I still fail to understand why their costs should be ignored — or does a person of the cloth still have to beg for food, shelter and Internet connectivity?

The majority of non-religious people (even those that may have only gone to a church as a child) that I’ve spoken to have said that they have or expect to get married in a church, have or expect to name their child in a church and, if they happen to have thought that far ahead, expect to have their funeral service in a church.

But this does not have to be the case. There are alternatives and they are not — as many people may suspect — antagonistic, iconoclastic alternatives. They are the marking of important events in our lives without the constant reference to an invisible force, or subject to the dogma and doctrine of that invisible force.

Let me repeat: you can get married, name your child, and farewell a loved one outside of a religious environment. And the sky will not fall.

It won’t be performed in a cleaner’s closet or seedy back room somewhere, and in many cases it can even take place in a religious building, if that is your wish. To any pro-religious detractors who may read this and scoff — please recognise that this is the humanistic recognition of the importance of milestones in our lives. It pre-dates all religion.

It might interest you to know that the British Humanist Association (BHA) responded today to Mr Tomlinson’s blog entry with the following article: BHA defends humanist funerals.

More Information
If you would like to learn more, please have a look at the following resources in addition to the Blogroll links elsewhere on this page:

UK:

• British Humanist Association (funerals section)
• National Secular Society
• Centre for Inquiry UK

US & Worldwide:

• Center for Inquiry
• Council for Secular Humanism
• Freedom From Religion Foundation
• International Humanist and Ethical Union (international umbrella body)
• Council of Australian Humanist Societies

Secular Humanism is not a religion, but it is a system of living that recognises the importance of ethics and morals — all without God, gods or superstition. You don’t need an invisible headmaster to make you a good person.

But don’t take what I say on faith… learn for yourself.

Finally got around to watching a YouTube video someone sent me a while ago and I’m stunned to find God’s Checklist 2.0 by Scott (aka TheoreticalBullshit) underlines and italicises so much of my argument with religion, particularly Christianity.

It’s done in an entertaining, thoughful, and challenging way, but not in a manner that would insult a reasonable theistic viewer. That’s a difficult balance to manage.

I expect some people will react to the video negatively (the video’s comments section on YouTube is ad hominem central — not that YouTube comments have a habit of being sane or rational at the best of times), and others of a mind for apologetics will offer up modern reasons why these Bronze Age inconsistencies exist. But the fact remains that Scott has done an excellent job in outlining the problem with the “party line” of many religions.

I’m looking forward to checking out more of his stuff.

For well over 10 years I’ve been hearing about the Slashdot Effect, since the advent of Web 2.0 I’ve seen it countless times on popular social sites like Digg, Reddit, and of course Slashdot, and years working as a security consultant gave me plenty of experience with denials of service (DoS) and distributed denials of service (DDoS) attacks. The Slashdot Effect is similar in both execution and results to a DDoS in that a single, often harmless, action by a huge number of computers brings the target server to its knees.

Of course there is one huge difference between the Slashdot Effect and (D)DoS attacks: the former is what the Internet is largely all about– spreading information or something cool to as many interested people as possible. The latter is normally about malice and criminal intent.

Sometime after I posted my previous post to this blog, a kindred spirit and fellow Twitter user (from whom I originally borrowed the image, giving source attribution as always) kindly shared my post with StumbleUpon. Oh. My. FSM.

From ~03:00 UTC yesterday this blog began serving the follow page:

It lasted for most of the UK morning until I got into my day job and eventually got around to doing my customary quick check of the admin page, and was greeted with the above error myself. In retrospect, a 1GB monthly “soft” bandwidth cap wasn’t that unreasonable for a modest blog such as this, but imagine everyone’s surprise to discover that 1.7GB was served within the space of just a few hours. O_o

To put it into context, Wordpress Stats shows that my previous peak viewing days were all below 500, and the daily average was much lower. Yesterday saw that ramp up almost an order of magnitude. All my pretty jagged lines showing how many visitors I’d had per day were suddenly all flatlined as the graph’s Y-axis re-scaled itself to show a mountain peak with no peers. Here’s what it looked like shortly after lunchtime yesterday:

Kinda cool, really.

So once I got my hosting provider to lift the bandwidth cap, I began taking the necessary steps to move the site to a new provider after finding one recommended by a friend that gives unlimited, well… everything: bandwidth, storage, domains, databases, mail accounts, etc, etc. What’s more, I managed to get the hosting plan for half price due to the beauty of automated signup process tracking and aggressive new customer policies…

Last night I spent the evening (not the most exciting way to spend a Friday night) setting up the new system and migrating the blog to the new provider. For those of you who tried read the blog via the website during this time, please accept my apologies for the downtime: it was unavoidable while the DNS server changes had to propagate across the Internet. If you want to blame someone — blame Paul Mockapetris (I’m such a nerd).

So it’s with delight — and not a small amount of relief — that I present to you Hurtling Through Space at its new home.

From this point forward the only negative impact this move should have is that those of you who have subscribed to posts will have lost those subscriptions (I’ll email each of those who left a valid email address to let you know, in case you miss this post). Please let me know if you find something wrong with the site — I haven’t fully tested it yet.

On the positive impact side, the address and everything remains the same, and it should be more reliable, faster and able to withstand the whimsy of Web 2.0 traffic floods.

Have at ye, ye worthless scurvy dogs! Arrrrr!

Following on with the theme of participating in blog aggregators and non-theistic blogging communities, Hurtling Through Space has now been added to The Atheist Blogroll. Those of you viewing the website can see the blogroll in my sidebar — nearly 1,000 blogs (at time of writing), all happily scrolling.

The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.