The Atheist Blogger

Intelligence Squared – Is Atheism the New Fundamentalism?

Adrian Hayter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:35:51 +0000

For anyone living in England, there is a promising debate coming up at Wellington College, Crowthorne, Berkshire on the 29th November. Richard Dawkins and A C Grayling will be debating “Is atheism the new fundamentalism?” with Richard Harries (former Bishop of Oxford) and Charles Moore (former editor of the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator). The debate costs £15 to get into, and starts at 7pm.

If you are interested, you can buy tickets from the Intelligence Squared website.

I’m going with a few friends and members of AtheistForums.org (one of whom is coming from the Netherlands). We are all meeting at The Iron Duke pub at 6pm for drinks, and then there again after the debate for more! If anyone wants to meet there, please do! My contact number for the day is: 07828 698967.

I don’t know what the turnout for the debate will be, but if the online poll is anything to go by, there will be plenty of atheists and secularists present. I’ll be taking photos and blogging about the event for anyone who can’t attend, although I hope to see you there if you can make it.

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An Atheist’s Astrology Chart

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:18:19 +0000

Way back in July, I responded to a tweet at showed up in my TweetDeck search that looks for mentions of words like “atheist”, “agnostic”, “skeptic”, etc. The tweet in question was from an astrologer on Twitter who I hadn’t come across before.

How deep a thinker is a skeptic, for the rest of the intellectual world to ever take notice of, when he MOCKS ALL people’s beliefs? – @edaugusts

Well evidently this was untrue; skeptics do not mock all beliefs, they challenge beliefs that have no evidence or explanation behind them. On the occasion we do mock (and I’m not denying this), we do it to beliefs that have consistently failed test after test. Beliefs like astrology, homeopathy, and applied kinesiology are openly mocked because they simply do not stand up to the rigorous tests that skeptics put them through. The tests aren’t impossible either; they are set up to test the exact claims that the belief makes, and if the belief was true, the test should be passed easily.

Knowing this, I sent a reply back to the astrologer:

Skeptics don’t embrace astrology because there is no evidence to suggest it works. In fact the evidence shows the exact opposite. – @ah8r

Angry reply after angry reply came back, attacking me for my atheism (saying I couldn’t find purpose in life), insulting the JREF and James Randi (although he curiously didn’t respond to my point about the JREF tests being set up and agreed to by the claimant), and generally acting like he had all the answers with none of the responsibility for burden of proof. Here are a few more of his tweets:

It does not take a genius to see that NO ONE would EVER be able to convince a devout skeptic like Randi about ANYTHING! – @edaugusts

Well nobody is trying to convince Randi; they are trying to pass the requirements (which are written in plain English) of the JREF $1,000,000 Challenge. The claimant contacts the JREF, and agrees to a test that would demonstrate the claimant’s powers. In all cases, the claimant comes up with the test, and the JREF come up with conditions that the test much adhere to in order to be fair. Mentioning Randi’s skepticism is nothing but a red herring.

Did you know James Randi (JREF) attacks many other targets, such as alternative medicine: http://cli.gs/YsNAUt – @edaugusts

Followed closely by another red herring. Just because the JREF attacks alternative medicine doesn’t mean their test for such pseudo-scientific claims is somehow flawed. The JREF was involved with the BBC a few years back to test Homeopathy. The BBC were the claimants (as an experiment) and helped set up the test, which failed miserably. The entire case is still documented at the BBC website, and the Horizon programme is probably still online somewhere.

To cut a long story short, I requested that he do a reading of my chart, since he said that such a reading would change my mind entirely. What follows are select parts of his finished reading (mainly because the thing is far too long to post here entirely), with comments interlaced from me. You can read the entire reading here.

This chart-work came up as a sort of ‘challenge’ on a Twitter thread a few days ago. The chart belongs to a young man who calls himself ‘AtheistBlogger’. He attracted my attention by making a wild comment on Twitter: “Astrology is crap,” which seemed a scary-kind of blanket statement to apply to such a well-researched and ancient subject of inquiry.

Whoaaa there! I never said any such thing! As you saw at the beginning of this post, my “wild comment” that first attracted his attention was that skeptics didn’t embrace astrology since there was no evidence of it working, and that all the evidence shows the complete opposite. A much more eloquent (and honestly skeptical) way of telling him that astrology simply doesn’t work. At this point, I was quite taken aback, and what is most interesting is that the astrologer built up a characterization of me from the way he interpreted my tweets. What I see as honest skepticism; references to studies that have debunked astrology, he sees as aggressiveness and close-mindedness. This actually helped me out a lot, because his reading was skewed off course by his own bias, and he ended up reading this characterization of me into the entire thing.

His chart is an amazing ’stand out’ in the incredibly bad aspects it forms to MY personal chart, which really is a wonderful validation of Astrology — I’m so glad he appeared in the cross-hairs for this encounter — because his chart PROVES Astrology through the definition of its many significant comparison aspects with my own chart. After all, it wasn’t anyone who got into this dispute about Astrology in Twitter except him — and me!

The obvious irony in the above statement is that if Astrology was true, and my chart “proved” this, I would have no choice but to accept it, and we would no longer be enemies. Heck, I’d probably hire him to do more readings; knowing the future is important! Of course, this would cause a contradiction with his following statement:

You NEVER see this line-up of powerfully negative aspects between friends. Maybe two enemies who meet in a killing field to cut holes in each other, but never friends!

He’s set up his position so that he cannot possibly lose though, since he again reverses his decision to allow for possible “understanding”:

There is, however, a ghost of a chance of some ultimate kind of limited understanding arising between us, based on his Libra Moon in a (weak) 5 degree trine to my Gemini Sun and his Gemini Venus being conjunct my Sun.

So, I deny Astrology, he wins. I accept Astrology, he wins (via a loophole). Of course, all this relies on friendships being predetermined by where and when you were born, something that is so astronomically bizarre that I doubt any astrologer would be able to demonstrate a good naturalistic method of how it works. But of course, they aren’t interested in demonstrating how it works; they just delude themselves into thinking that because people find it accurate in places, it must be true. However they fail to realise that their “predictions” are often so vague that they cover almost all bases.

Ed starts his reading in a truly skeptical sense though:

At first I wondered if he would give me his actual chart data, or use the birth date of some well-known public figure so that he could make fun of me afterwords for describing him using a chart belonging to some rap singer or football player! I suspected a ruse, because that sort of thing has been done in the past on USENET sites, where skeptics used to gather before Google archiving put an end to their most rampant abuses. But after looking at the chart for a few minutes, I wrote a message on Twitter stating that AtheistBlogger had been good as his word, and sent me his true birth data. How did I know? Because the major positions and aspects portray the person who came forward on Twitter.

Ok, he started out skeptical, but then deteriorated into a conclusion based entirely on faulty reasoning and…well…faith. As I previously showed, my attitude coming across on Twitter was pure skepticism; I challenged him in a polite manner, responded to his points, etc. I was met with anger, attacks on my disbelief, and just general insults on skepticism. I’m confused as to why skeptics giving wrong data is a “rampant abuse” though; surely if Astrology worked so well, you would easily be able to tell wrong birth data straight away? It’s a test; it might be sneaky, but at the end of the day, if the claim is that it can tell you information about a person just by birth data, then a test of giving the “wrong” birth data should still return information about the person it actually belongs to, rather than the person giving the information.

The Jupiter-Neptune aspect shows, surprisingly enough, an actual connection with religion, a familiarity with it. Perhaps as a child he was coaxed to learn the Bible from a parent or grandparent who hoped to indoctrinate the child in that system of beliefs. He didn’t reckon on AtheistBlogger disliking authority — other than himself! — and challenging any such teachings.

The word “perhaps” doesn’t give me much confidence here. Yes, I have a “familiarity” with religion, but then you’d be hard pushed to find someone (even an atheist) who doesn’t. The vast majority of atheists were once religious. However, as a child I wasn’t indoctrinated by anyone. My mother was somewhat religious, but didn’t force me to read the Bible at all. We went to church rarely, usually only for harvest festivals or when some form of concert was on. My father wasn’t religious at all.

There is nothing at peace and rest in this square between Mars and Pluto. It causes a person to be unjustifiably wrathful, scornful, severe, and possibly violent against anyone who doesn’t share his personal opinions. It invites violence in its turn, so as a child, AtheistBlogger may have had more than his share of personal challenges — wins — and losses. It is as if at some point in his young life, he has already, or soon will, witness violence of a kind usually only seen in war. He may even be at the center of an episode of some kind of violence!

Violent? Moi? I don’t think there has ever been a more absurd accusation. The closest I get to violence is killing aliens and Nazi’s on video games, and in the “real world”, I don’t get into fights, feel compelled to strike anyone, or do anything that could be considered “violent” by any sane individual. Anyone who knows my views will be aware that I am for a completely open free speech society, one where any view may be shared by anyone. Yes, that means even astrologers can peddle their ideas about the stars, as long as I (and anyone else) gets the right to call them out on their claims, and challenge their views. Again, Ed finishes this prediction with a lot of unsure language, nothing certain, so that he can claim he is correct either way.

His sibling(s) probably include a brother, shown by Mars (male) in the 3rd House (siblings). He has at least twice the chance of having a brother than he does a sister… If he does have a sister, which is not as likely, she will be more aggressive and a source of possible trouble to him than most sisters, since Mars marks-her-out. In any case, there will be rivalries with this sibling over inheritance or other worries. He or she may have a sporty affable nature, but be prone to accidents and dangers (Mars square Pluto). He may lose a sibling because of Mars being in that house, that sign, and the way it relates to the other planets. Traveling abroad for said brother, and/or driving in the same car with this brother, may be dangerous (square both Jupiter and Pluto).

I really did have to laugh at this part. I have one sister, and one half-sister (on my father’s side). Quite amusing for a claim that I have at least “twice the chance of having a brother than a sister”. Both my sisters are no trouble for me at all; they aren’t aggressive at all. Likewise, there isn’t any sibling rivalry in my family; my sister is into history and archaeology, subjects I dislike completely (she dislikes Computer Science in return)! Neither are prone to accidents, and I honestly cannot remember the last time my sister was rushed to Hospital, but if memory serves correctly, she was 5 (she’s now 19). I’ve broken both my hand and my finger in various accidents, my sister hasn’t broken anything.

Writing or teaching could certainly be good careers for AtheistBlogger, and Jupiter and Mercury together also promise travel, so a Grand Tour is indicated. The mind is adept at languages, indeed all symbol-systems veritably fall before him.

Writing or teaching are possible careers for me, so good work there. However the only languages I am “adept” at are English and various (English-based) programming languages. I had to take French and Spanish at school, and I failed miserably at them. I just don’t do foreign languages, let alone symbol-systems.

But he is an avid learner. Libra Moon, well-aspected, makes him know how to behave among the fair and beautiful. His Mercury conjunct Jupiter shows he learns farther and wider than most people. He loves learning and is enthusiastic about information and news.

Finally…something I can actually relate to. Astrology makes a hit! Shame about all the other misses, but heck, if I only remember this thing, I can join the ranks of people who claim Astrology “works” for them.

He has ideas about becoming famous by challenging people’s beliefs. This is basically a ’sales’ idea. Various sales activities, not just atheism, would be appreciated by the general public and may be of interest to him.

Meh…not really. I have ideas about becoming famous by creating new internet technologies for people to use, but I doubt it’ll involve challenging people’s beliefs. I’d hate being in a “sales activities” position though; I’d much rather be the guy coding or leading the product than the person who has to sell it at the end.

The rest of the reading deals with potential fortune, relationship predictions, and various things about me dying in car crashes (apparently, I’d best use public transport…). Suffice to say, there are probably a lot of people who could relate to it better than I can. If you have more than one brother, speak fluent foreign languages, used to be religious, and like learning, please let me know.

It was a very interesting experience having my chart drawn up though. I’ll have to get it done more in future and compare the results. Who knows, perhaps if we eliminate the bias of reading into my tweets, it might turn out as an accurate representation of…me! I somehow doubt it though; for all the hits Ed got (and admittedly, there were some), he got at least 4-5 times as many misses, and that’s excluding all the vague generalizations that could literally apply to 90% of the population.

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I Am Alive

Adrian Hayter — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:35:41 +0000

This is just a quick blog post to highlight the reasons for my continued absence from the blog, as my last post was more than a month ago, and I haven’t posted on a “regular” basis for several months. There are a few reasons for this, the main one being an increased workload at university, given that I am now in my final year of study for my degree. It’s more than that though; I like writing blog posts, but I generally think that blog posts that aren’t at least a few paragraphs long are ultimately pointless unless they are really meant as quick placeholders to let people know what I’m up to.

I’ve been told multiple times by people that I’ve exceptionally good at explaining things (usually), and when I have an idea for a blog post, I want to research it as much as I can before I write about it. I usually read several sources, and the whole process takes a good hour at least, if not more. Hence my problem is finding a few hours free where I can work on the post without interruptions. Of course, the other problem is that Twitter has practically removed the need to write small updates on the blog. Not only do I stay in contact with a lot of my friends and readers via Twitter, I can post tiny bursts of information from literally anywhere with a 3G internet connection.

Another problem is that other projects have suddenly become popular, largely because of my advertising them on Twitter. AtheistForums.org for instance, has exploded with new members and posts in the past few months. Various events in the world have managed to piss me off so much that I’ve become increasingly more interested in politics, namely that of Libertarianism in the UK (a criminally underrepresented minority in my opinion). I could rant about so many things on this blog, but I’m worried it’ll just divert off to something of a personal blog again, rather than one focused on atheism.

Anyway, I’m going to plow ahead and see what happens. I want this blog to stay on track, and I certainly have no plans to take it down. I’ve been doing some “atheistic” work recently, so I’ll be blogging about that when I find the time. Tomorrow for instance, I’m going to the House of Lords (part of British parliament) with the President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Societies (AHS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA). Last week, I met Ariane Sherine at a book swap event in Windsor, and I have the photo to prove it:

@ah8r + @arianesherine = @awesomeness

So watch this space. It’ll be updated eventually, but possibly not as often as I have managed before. I’d just like to thank everyone who has supported the blog thus far, and that includes all my readers, all my twitter followers, and anyone else who’s stopped by and thought “cool blog”.

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Stuck to My Seat

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:00:20 +0000

Last night, Derren Brown promised to show a subliminal film that would glue a lot of us to our seats; we would literally not be able to get up. A lot of people watched, and over 500,000 of us were “stuck”, myself included. My friends Florian and Laura were watching with me, but after the film ended they were able to stand up without any problems. I found myself suddenly incapable of doing so.

There were a lot of cries of “you’re joking!” and “stop messing us around”, which slowly but surely turned into gasps of shock and horror as they realised that I really couldn’t stand up. The best I could do was get a few cm of the chair by pushing up with my hands, but my legs simply refused to support me. It was a weird feeling, but as I watched the subliminal clip, I felt my legs getting heavier and heavier. By the end, I could hardly feel them at all, and as I tried to get up, they turned to jelly and all the energy went out of me.

My friend filmed the event laughing at my futile efforts to lift myself. If it’s not too embarrassing I’ll upload it to YouTube sometime this week for you to watch. Next week, Derren has promised to turn us into “psychic spies”, which will be very interesting. When Florian and I viewed the subliminal film again today, nothing happened to either of us, and I reckon the subliminal messages are shown through the entire episode instead of the small film that was meant to do the job. Derren is all about misdirection after all!

Update: Here is a picture of my friend (and fellow atheist) Robert Heywood (@rjheywood) stuck to his seat:

Witchcraft, suggestion, or laziness? You decide.

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YouTube Thursday – Faith, Derren Brown, & Bibleman

Adrian Hayter — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:08:33 +0000

The main video event this week was dprjones‘ 24 hour blogtv charity drive in aid of Doctors without Borders. The target amount to raise was $10,000 and this was quickly surpassed during the show and reached a final total of $18,761.92. The combination of this total and the amount brought in by the eBay auctions reached over $32,000. Congratulations to dprjones and all his co-hosts for putting on a great show and for raising so much for a great charity!

The first video I want to share is a new one from QualiaSoup, and fans of his videos will know that he always manages to convey complex ideas across in an easy to understand manner. His latest video on “Putting faith in its place” is no exception.

Some of you are probably still trying to figure out how Derren Brown actually managed to predict the lottery, so here is a video laced with helpful hints and annotations (go to the YouTube site to view the annotations).

Finally, I’m not sure how many people will be able to view this due to “copyright restrictions” but here is a clip from a TV show making fun of an American Christian superhero show called “Bibleman”. It really is quite bizarre, and if you want to see more, I suggest searching for “Bibleman” at YouTube; there are plenty of videos to watch!

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How to Predict the National Lottery

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:00:36 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Last Wednesday, Derren Brown amazed the nation by predicting the National Lottery. On Friday night, he promised to reveal how to do the trick, and this resulted in an hour long show that demonstrated some nice mental gymnastics, but no real answer. He started by stating that there were three (main) ways of predicting the National Lottery:

Faking a ticket.
Predicting the outcome of the machine.
Fixing the machine.

Option 1 wasn’t really an option for him, since it involved breaking the law and wasn’t really predicting anything. Option 2 was of more interest, and the rest of the show was devoted to this, explaining about various mathematical tricks you can do, and finally came to the “wisdom of crowds” technique.

Derren explained that a mathematician observed a “guess the weight of the ox” game at a country fair, and although nobody got the answer spot on, if you took the average of the answers given by the crowd, you got the exact weight. He said the same technique could be used to predict the lottery, and showed a film of 24 individuals studying the numbers of the last 100 lotteries, and trying to figure out what the next numbers would be. On the first attempt, they got 1 correct, on the second, when they did automatic writing and were allowed to write down negative numbers and numbers higher than 49 (the highest number in the lottery), they got 4 out of 6. Derren claimed that on the last go (a few minutes before his lottery prediction on Wednesday), they gave him the numbers that would eventually end up on the podium next to him; his prediction.

Of course, none of that makes any sense, and it doesn’t surprise me. Predicting the lottery is impossible if you are trying to guess some kind of pattern to the numbers. The reason why “wisdom of crowds” worked for the ox is because everyone could see the ox, and in guessing its weight you will have people who go too high and people who go too low, the average of all these values will be a good estimate for the weight. The same just doesn’t apply to random lottery balls; it doesn’t matter if a group of 24 people come up with “2″ as an answer, the machine will pick balls at random, and in a random machine every ball has an equal chance of coming out.

So how did he do it? People who want to believe his explanation will think that, the more rational will come up with other methods he could have used. The one that seems most likely is the theory that he simply used a split-screen and some very clever live video editing. The evidence that backs this theory up is the apparent sudden movement of one of the end balls in the stand (caused by the split-screen syncing back to a single-screen view), and the fact that Derren didn’t reveal his prediction before the actual draw. His reason for not doing this is that the BBC had a legal right to announce the result before anyone else, but the only problem with that logic is that he wasn’t announcing the result, he was announcing his prediction. Even in the “behind the scenes” footage that he aired with his show on Friday, you only see him select the balls out of the box, not the actual balls themselves.

As for option 3, in the true spirit of a showman, Derren took to the stage in the last 5 minutes of his Friday show, and told everyone how he *could* have done it by fixing the machines; simply make 12 sets of weighted balls, sneak into the high security area where the machines are used, and replace the regular balls with the weighted ones. His story was illustrated by blurred out pictures on the wall behind him, which gave everyone a laugh, and reminded everyone that this was Derren Brown; a man who does not reveal his secrets even if he says he will.

This Friday, Derren has promised to reveal a tape that will literally “glue us to our seats” in a show he has called “How to Control the Nation“. I’ll be sat with my laptop so I can tweet the event and see whether I get “stuck” as Derren says I will.

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Derren Brown Predicts the National Lottery

Adrian Hayter — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:41:21 +0000

Well my flatmate and I are sitting astounded (still) that Derren Brown (a famous atheist skeptic & mentalist in the UK) managed to predict the National Lottery balls (all 6 of them). Here is the video:

We flicked between the BBC live reading and the Channel 4 program which Derren was on, and it was near enough in sync (given the small delay of it coming from the BBC and going through Channel 4). How did he do it? He’ll reveal all (apparently) on Friday night!

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Carnival of the Godless #124

Adrian Hayter — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:37:27 +0000

The latest Carnival of the Godless is up at Radical Atheist, so go check it out! It’s a great carnival, and has two great reviews of the new book “The evolution of God” which were very informative.

Remember to submit something to the next carnival, or put your own blog forward for the prestigious job of hosting the carnival!

As a side note, I’ve been meaning to update this blog a lot more often, but every time I’ve sat down to write a post, something else has barged in the way, whether it be important emails I have to answer, work that has to be done, or (most recently) a breach of my PayPal account which almost cost me $300 I don’t have. Nevertheless, I’m finally emerging from the flow of “more-important-than-blogging” things, and there will be a few articles up this week on my adventures in Egypt, and my delving into Astrology!

Given that Twitter is a far better (and quicker) way of getting my thoughts out, if you miss me you can always follow my thoughts there. My account is @ah8r.

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The Pledge of Allegiance

Adrian Hayter — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:52:27 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Reader Ryan Latham has created an informative presentation on the origins and history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a brief introduction to the constitutional issues it faces. I’m not an American citizen, but it is hard to be a secularist online and not know about the 1954 inclusion of the words “under God” into the Pledge to counter “godless communism” at the time.

Ryan’s presentation fills you in on the court cases involving the Pledge, and how the addition of “under God” would fare if tested by the courts today.

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How Atheists Use Twitter

Adrian Hayter — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 11:41:55 +0000

S.J. Velasquez of Religion News Service has written a great report on how atheists are coming together through Twitter. It has quotes from interviews with P.Z Myers (of Pharyngula), Hemant Mehta (of Friendly Atheist), and Blair Scott (of American Atheists).

There is also a mention of “one atheist [who] has taken it upon himself to tutor other nonbelievers in effective use of Twitter.” Wait a minute…that’s me! Yup, I got a nice chunk of paragraphs in there too. The whole article is a nice secular take on atheists getting through the hate and misunderstanding in order to find others like themselves, and is well worth the read.