More Hypocrisy from Religious Figures: Who'd've thought it?

I notice one of the most strident voices opposing the new offence against incitement to homophobic hatred in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill is Colin Hart, Director of the conservative evangelical Christian Institute. Here's what he said:

“In a democratic society people must be free to express their beliefs without fear of censure. A homophobic hatred law would be used by those with an axe to grind against Christians to silence them. There has already been high profile cases of the police interfering with free speech and religious liberty regarding sexual ethics. People shouldn’t face prison for expressing their sincerely-held religious beliefs.”

He's really giving the old free speech defence some welly isn't he? Apropos of nothing much, here's Colin Hart back in 2005 on Jerry Springer: The Opera:

"The BBC has a duty to respect the religious beliefs of its viewers... Genuine religious debate and criticism is one thing, but this show is an offensive, spiteful, systematic mockery and wilful denigration of Christian belief."

He then promptly called for a judicial review of its screening. What - use the law to silence something he disagrees with? But he's so keen on free speech! I'll remind you of that quote again: "In a democratic society people must be free to express their beliefs without fear of censure."

That's what makes me so angry about so many religious public figures. They're not actually interested in free speech, or any consistent set of moral principles. What they're interested in is using the law to bully people into not saying anything they don't like, whilst hiding behind the law as soon as anyone says anything nasty about them. "Don't hate us, but it's fine for us to hate you." They're disingenuous, self-interested hypocrites. It's pathetic.

Cool Atheist Music 6 - Nine Inch Nails - Heresy

This week's cool atheist music comes from Nine Inch Nails, and was suggested by esaul17. It should suit those who like their atheism angry, with a shouty chorus.

If anyone has any ideas for cool atheist music feel free to contribute, and hopefully this series can become a little more regular! For previous posts in this series, see here.

Cephalopods, mosasaurs, and Cretaceous parenting

Typical. You go away on holiday, you come back, and it's International Cephalopod Awareness Day. And me with nothing to wear, and shoes that don't match my dress, and a handbag that's so last season... anyway, moving swiftly on, back to the cephalopods.

As any palaeontologist worth his (or her) salt knows, the ultimate cephalopods are ammonoids and nautiloids. Whilst taking my MSci I briefly studied these fantastic beasties, completing a three month research project on predation on ammonoids. During my studies, I came across this fascinating research paper (Kaufmann 2004), detailing a mosasaur attack on a Cretaceous nautiloid. In this paper Kaufmann presents a nautiloid (Argonautilus catarinae) recovered in San Diego county, California (image below).

As you can see the nautiloid has three large puncture marks (indicated AT in the figure), and five smaller ones (indicated JT). From the size and spacing of these puncture marks Kaufmann infers them to be mosasaur bite marks, most likely from Mosasaurus or Platycarpus. The smaller punctures form a separate bite, and precede the larger punctures making up the second bite. This second bite most likely killed the nautiloid and caused it to sink, penetrating the flotation and living chamber. Kaufmann argues that these bites consist of two mosasaurs of the same species, an adult and a juvenile.

Evidence from the pattern of bite marks in ammonites implies a learned mosasaur behavior pattern of blind-side attack of the prey first, followed by positioning bites using both the stabbing and pterygoid teeth, followed by one or more bites across the living chamber of the ammonite designed to rip the prey animal out of the shell to consume it. Combining these two lines of evidence, Kaufmann paints a picture of a mother mosasaur teaching the child the best way to tackle this food source. So from this specimen (and with only minor speculation!) we have inferred not only part of an ecosystem, but part of a mode of life, and maybe part of the parent-child dynamic also.

And that's what's so fascinating about palaeontology. This vignette played itself out millions of years ago - not only are its individual actors long dead, but so are their entire species. And yet from a small fragment of rock we can reconstruct so much of their lives. From that rock, just for a moment, we too can swim in the Cretaceous seas, can envisage a life far removed from our own, infer its dramas and imbibe of its wonder.

Amazing.

References:

KAUFFMAN, ERLE G. Mosasaur Predation on Upper Cretaceous Nautiloids and Ammonites from the United States Pacific Coast Palaios 2004 19: 96-100

Normal blogging service is resumed

I got back from holiday yesterday, and started* my PhD today, so things have been hectic. But I'm back now, and thanks for your patience in putting up with the week's break (And if you didn't, well, you won't be reading this, so, um, hahaha, you smell.). I've got some cool pictures of a snake I nearly stood on, and of what happens when flying ants decide to combine their yearly emergence and search for a new home with high tide whilst living on a beach (It's not pretty). Sadly what I do not currently appear to have is a camera lead to transfer these pictures, but when I do I'll post them up. And with that rambling over, we return you to your normal viewing.

* For a given value** of 'started'.
** The value that means 'The stupid registry claimed they didn't have my references even though they were e-mailed months ago and so I had to go home at lunch to sort it out and so got nothing done.'***
*** Sigh.

A brief blogging break

I'm off on holiday until next weekend, so there'll be no updates for the next week. Until then, treat this blog as your own, browse through the back archives, submit posts to Digg :), etc. See you in a week.

A Pleasant Surprise

Whilst reading an article by Simon Barnes in the Times about the problems facing Test cricket, I was pleasantly surprised by the following paragraph:

But let’s not talk about evolution. That only confuses things. The use of Darwinian theory to explain and justify changes in human society is one of the greatest misunderstandings in philosophical history. Evolution is not a march of progress, it does not reach a goal of perfection and, for the record, neither humankind nor a single certain human race is the crown of creation.

And that's why he's my favourite sports writer.

Cool Atheist Music 5 - Bad Religion - God's Love

This week's cool atheist music comes from Bad Religion. I was going to pick their track "Materialist" off the Process of Belief, which is more of a positive view of naturalism and atheism, but it appears that it hasn't been uploaded to the interwebs yet. So here's "God's Love" off the Empire Strikes First, on the problem of evil.

Incidentally, there were about 20 or 30 Bad Religion songs I could have picked - if you like punk rock and atheism, you really should check them out. And their lead singer (Greg Graffin) has a PhD in evolutionary biology. Amazing.

If anyone has any ideas for cool atheist music feel free to contribute, and hopefully this series can become a little more regular! For previous posts in this series, see here.