An experiment.

So, here's a scientific study purporting to show that Americans are self-centred. That's a new one.

Rugged American individualism could hinder our ability to understand other peoples' point of view, a new study suggests.

And in contrast, the researchers found that Chinese are more skilled at understanding other people's perspectives, possibly because they live in a more "collectivist" society.

Nice slipping-in of the word "possibly" there. What the researcher, Boaz Keysar, is saying is that his team have made an interesting discovery about the different behaviour of people from different cultures and have no idea what causes that difference, but, let's face it, it's probably that those bloody Americans are insufficiently Socialist, isn't it? The self-centred Capitalist bastards.

But has Keysar really made a particularly interesting discovery? Hmm.

The study, though oversimplified compared to real life, was instructive. Keysar and his colleagues arranged two blocks on a table so participants could see both. However, a piece of cardboard obstructed the view of one block so a "director," sitting across from the participant, could only see one block.

When the director asked 20 American participants (none of Asian descent) to move a block, most were confused as to which block to move and did not take into account the director's perspective. Even though they could have deduced that, from the director's seat, only one block was on the table.

Most of the 20 Chinese participants, however, were not confused by the hidden block and knew exactly which block the director was referring to. While following directions was relatively simple for the Chinese, it took Americans twice as long to move a block.

What is truly amazing about this result is that the only conclusion Keysar has been able to reach from his data is that Chinese are more empathetic than Americans.

What is not being considered here is the obvious fact that the participants were all well aware that the "director" was a part of the research team. If you just happen to find yourself in a room with some bloke, and he asks you to, say, hand him a book, and you can see two books but you can also see that he can only see one of them because there's a lamp or something in the way of the other, it doesn't take much deduction to figure out which one to give him. But if you know that he carefully set the room up before you arrived, that he positioned the books and the lamp, that he decided where you and he would sit in the room, and that he is testing you in some unspecified way, it's considerably less obvious: OK, you can see that he can only see one of the books, but you know full well that he knows about the other one and knows exactly where it is. And you know that these damn psychologists are testing your ability to do something or other — for all you know, it might be your ability to see or to do the non-obvious. In those circumstances, a failure to jump to conclusions would be, I'd've thought, a sign of intelligence — in fact, being slowed down by considering not only what the director can see but also what you think he probably knows would arguably be a sign of greater empathy, not less. Meanwhile, a quick reaction could simply indicate a fear of getting in serious trouble if you don't obey orders quickly enough — which would not be surprising in people used to living under a murderous dictatorship.

And then there's the wording:

the director asked [participants] to move a block

This is just some news report and could be inaccurate, but that wording kind of leaps out because it's so non-standard: "a block", not "the block". If the director really was using that wording, then that skews the experiment yet further, because we simply don't use the word "a" to describe single objects. If the director were genuinely only aware of the presence of one block, he'd say "the block"; saying "a block" would signal to the subject that he knows of at least two of them. This sort of subtlety might well not be noticed by Chinese people for whom English is not a first language. Or, if the experimenters spoke to their Chinese subjects in Chinese, we'd need to know how well that distinction between "the" and "a" translates into Chinese.

There is a brief glimmer of hope that Keysar is aware of his experiment's inadequacies:

"Of course, these are very gross oversimplifications," said Keysar.

No, really?

"Even in America, you can find collectivist societies. For example, working class people tend to be much more collective."

But no: it's not the experiment which is oversimplified; merely the idea that all Americans are selfish. Some are actually OK. And as an example, Keysar names a left-wing designated victim group. It's almost as if the guy has some other agenda or something.

Some of my best friends use the "Some of my best friends" argument.

As a rule, anyone who responds to an accusation of prejudice with any variation of "But some of my best friends are [insert victim group here]" is met with derision. But, though it can be easily shown not to be completely logically unassailable — Norm does so succinctly here — it surely does carry some weight. I mean, if I hated Poles, I'd avoid hanging out with them. Wouldn't you? And I'm sure they'd avoid me too.

Thinking about this the other day, it occurred to me that the some-of-my-best-friends argument is dismissed because it is misunderstood. It is not an all-purpose defense; it is generally used in a specific case.

Here's an example. Bill is gay. John isn't. John says something to Bill. Bill finds it offensive, and says so. Would John use the some-of-my-best-friends response here? Well, he might — never underestimate stupidity, ineloquence, and blind panic — but probably not: it doesn't make sense in such a case. If a gay man is standing in front of you, telling you that he is offended, it does no good to mention the existence of some of your gay friends. There is no reason for him to give a damn.

Now consider this one. Simon and Harry are both white. Simon says something that Harry considers to be racist towards black people, and Harry says so. Simon might well respond to Harry that he has lots of black friends — and it does make sense to do so. This is exactly the sort of situation where the some-of-my-best-friends argument usually occurs: when dealing with people who are offended on the behalf of others.

Considering that, it becomes clear that the some-of-my-best-friends argument is in fact a shorthand.

Some of my best friends are black

really means:

Some of my best friends, unlike you, are black, and I don't have to watch my mouth around them, and they, unlike you, don't think I'm a racist

or, more to the point:

You claim that what I say is deeply offensive to black people, but when I say it in front of actual real-life black people, they don't see it as a reason not to be my friend.

After all, the alternative simply makes no sense:

Some of my best friends are black, but I'm careful not to express my opinions in front of them 'cause if I did they'd hate me.

I think this much-scoffed-at argument may have a lot more weight than the scoffers realise.

Tripe.

This piece on terrorism by Bruce Schneier is very interesting — and deeply wrong in a great many ways. What I particularly wanted to comment on was this excellent example of Bush Derangement Syndrome:

Perversely, Bush's misinterpretation of terrorists' motives actually helps prevent them from achieving their goals.

It is endlessly interesting to me, the way in which the conviction shared by so many highly intelligent people that George Bush is stupid turns their intelligence off so effectively. Their absolute refusal to consider that he might ever achieve what he sets out to leads them to say things which are simply thick.

Let's, for the sake of argument, assume that everything else in Schneier's article is correct. Even then, wouldn't this make more sense?

Cunningly, Bush's misrepresentation of terrorists' motives helps prevent them from achieving their goals.

As for the rest of Schneier's argument — his conclusion is that terrorism doesn't work — most of his commenters have pointed out the flaws in his reasoning and assumptions, some at great length. Much as I'd love to join in, there's really no point, because this short and unfortunately anonymous comment cuts to the chase and blows the entire idea apart so beautifully concisely:

So if THE TERRORISTS take a deep breath, think it over and change their objective to KEEP the US in Iraq and continue bombing they will fail because terrorism doesn't work and the US will leave.

Interesting.

 

Names.

Jon points us towards yet another example of the welfare state getting it wrong. It has all the usual ingredients: the long-term unemployed being paid so handsomely for doing nothing that they continue to do it; being penalised by the state for working; people who actually work realising that those who don't are materially wealthier.... but we know all this. What's really interesting is the names chosen by this couple for their kids.

Carl and Samantha Gillespie have twelve children: five from Samantha's first marriage and another seven from their own. Well, probably. The Mail, bless 'em, aren't quite sure.

Former book-keeper Samantha, 35, had five children from a previous relationship when she married Carl, who used to work as a door-to-door salesman. ...

The couple then had seven of their own

But, further down the same article:

Paul and Samantha have eight children together and she has four from a previous relationship, making 12 in total.

Interesting. When Samantha's husband is calling himself Paul, her fifth child is his; when his name is Carl, it isn't. These people have an odd relationship.

Anyway, as I was saying before I got distracted by The Mail's world-class sub-editors, it's the Gillespies' kids names that are interesting.

I think we tend to suspect that, when a child gets given the sort of name that a five-year-old girl would give one of her dolls, it's the mother's doing. Calling children Tixie-Wixie, Snugglebunny, Twinkle-Toes, or Plumkin just doesn't scream "bloke". Well, not until now. Step forward, Carl (or maybe Paul) Gillespie.

Former book-keeper Samantha, 35, had five children from a previous relationship when she married Carl, who used to work as a door-to-door salesman. They are Craig, 16, Adam, 14, Jack, 13, Rebekah, 11, and Harry, nine.

Good names, them. Then Samantha married Carl. And just look what happened.

The couple then had seven of their own: twins Parris-Jordan and Kesla Blu, eight; twins Mason and Peaches, six; Logan, four, and the three-year-old twins Skye and Kalifornya.

So, the question is: Did Carl choose these names? Or is it that Samantha's first boyfriend put his foot down and refused to let her give his kids crap names? Come to think of it, maybe that's why they split up. I can just see Samantha storming out of the house, shouting "I want to call my daughter Kesla Blu, and I'm going to go and find a decent man who'll let me!"

Welcome to modern Britain.

Lateral thinking at Microsoft.

Mark Liberman at Language Log links to this interesting observation by Michael Kaplan of Microsoft about how to turn off the hated Office Assistant:

Have you tried being rude to him?

Apparently, type "God damn clippy" into the "What would you like to do" box, and ...

After telling Clippy this, the first item on the list explains how to change the Office Assistant,and the second item explains how to hide or show it.

Michael makes three observations:

An amazing number of people use this exact phrase;

There are reportedly many other expressions of negative Clippy feelings that will have the same effect on search in help;

There are disadvantages to a formal education that make this method of finding a solution less obvious.

That third observation is particularly interesting — but, like, I suspect, everyone else who read the piece, I decided to concentrate on the second one by firing up the Office Assistant and swearing profusely at the little bastard.

My research indicates that the Office Assistant recognises quite a bit of abuse: "Fuck off", "Sod off", and "Bugger off" all work, as does the word "arsehole" (you may need to combine these phrases with "Clippy" or "Assistant"). But my most interesting finding is what happens when you tell Clippy "Fuck you" in Word: the first template he offers you is "Thank-you for job interview". Genius.

And you get the same result for "I wish you were dead".

Yet more cartoon-related kerfuffle.

I admit I hadn't heard anything about this Islamic Rage Boy nonsense till about ten minutes ago, but this quote from Buckley F Williams, one of the cartoon's creators, puts the whole thing — that's not just the Islamic-Rage-Boy thing, but the whole what's-the-problem-with-Islam thing — perfectly:

We're anti-Muslim-extremism, the loudest voice of the Muslim world right now, which would lead one to believe it is the dominant voice of the Muslim faith.

Believe me, we want to be proven wrong. It isn't as though we were sitting around at our monthly Ku Klux Klan meetings and drawing religions out of a hat to see who would become the object of our scorn and ridicule next.

 

The worst floods in sixty years.

If you've just lost all your possessions and had to be winched to safety by the RAF, you might want to consider suing the Pagans for damages. It'd be great. The case should be easy enough to prove: they could mount an effective defense by claiming that their rain magic doesn't work, but what self-respecting religious nutter would do that?

Publicity and offense.

This story is just great on so many levels:

A giant outline of Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was enough to make even pagans go "D'oh".

In my ideal world, the job of a newspaper editor would be to remove that sort of writing. Not at The Mail. Anyway, if you've finished laughing uproariously, I'll continue.

Painted opposite famous fertility symbol, the Cerne Abbas giant, the idea had been to plug the new Simpsons movie due out later this month.

I do recommend you follow the link to see the picture. It's quite brilliant.

But instead the image has incited the wrath of British pagans who have now pledged to perform "rain magic" to rid their sacred site of its unwelcome guest.

Ring any bells? A religious group is throwing a tantrum over a cartoon, the poor dears. Thankfully, these nutters aren't threatening to cut off our heads, so we can just sit back and enjoy the spectacle of their batshit-crazy outrage without having to run for the hills or buy lots of Lurpak like last time.

Pagans, eh? A mysterious and ancient religion, predating the Roman invasion of Britain. They have obscure traditions and strange rituals whose origins are lost in the mists of time, and are presided over by the great spiritual leader ...

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation

Joint district manager? Of a federation? Jesus wept. Oh, sorry — er, someone wept. Maybe it was Herne. I don't know. Anyway.

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: "It's very disrespectful and not at all aesthetically pleasing.

"We were hoping for some dry weather but I think I have changed my mind. We'll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away."

Rain magic! Oo! That's the special Pagan magic where they somehow make it rain. In Britain! During the rainiest Summer in over a century! It's only because they're so deeply in harmony with Mother Earth that they can pull this sort of thing off, you know.

She added: "I'm amazed they got permission to do something so ridiculous. It's an area of scientific interest."

Yes, that's why Pagans object to someone ridiculing their religion: it's unscientific.

Anyway, what's really interesting here is that The Mail appear to have done their research properly, but have mysteriously glossed over its results.

The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.

That's a good sentence, that. If you weren't concentrating, you might not notice that it's "a symbol of ancient spirituality" rather than "an ancient symbol of spirituality" — an important distinction, because, like it says at the start of the sentence, the Cerne Abbas Giant is not actually ancient, as it only dates from the Seventeenth Century. Paganism wasn't big at the time. Britain had been a Christian country for over a thousand years.

Until only a few years ago, the figure was believed to be an Iron-age monument of some sort. But recent historical research has revealed that this is not the case: not only is the carving a mere four-hundred years old, but it is quite likely to be a satirical cartoon of Oliver Cromwell. Now, if I were a Pagan and I'd built up a load of beliefs and rituals around something that turned out to be a hoax and might well be a picture of a famous Christian, the last thing I'd want to do is draw attention to my (excuse the pun) cock-up. Not so British Pagans, it seems: their approach appears to be a quite staggering degree of disingenuity.

Catherine Hosen, who is the Wiltshire representative for The Pagan Federation ...

I wonder, is a representative more or less spiritually accomplished than a joint district manager? And do they get a special hat? Anyway.

Catherine Hosen, who is the Wiltshire representative for The Pagan Federation, said: "I find it quite shocking and very disrespectful.

"It's just a publicity stunt for a film and we are talking about a monument which is definitely of great historical significance and a lot of people feel has important spiritual significance as well."

Look at that: it's definitely of great historical significance, yes, and a lot of people feel that it's also of spiritual significance, and if I don't mention that the actual reason for its historical significance and the wished-for and now disproven reason for its spiritual significance are completely and utterly unrelated, you'll never notice, will you? It's a great bit of maneouvring: grudgingly concede that the thing's only four-hundred years old but claim that it is nevertheless a symbol of Iron-age beliefs. Of course, it is conceivable that a bunch of Seventeenth-century Pagans carved the figure in honour of their ancient beliefs, but it is unlikely that the local Christian church would then have started paying for its upkeep — which is where the earliest records of its existence come from. The Cerne Abbas Giant simply isn't Pagan.

So, to recap. The Cerne Abbas Giant is a cartoon. Another cartoon has been temporarily placed next to it. Pagans are outraged over this "disrespectful" treatment of something that is not a part of their religion.

Am I breaking Blunkett's religious intolerance law yet?

A displaced fight.

Gary's been blogging about the Silver Ring Thing debacle, and I've been happily baiting one Mr Alex Botten in the comments. Gary has quite sensibly asked that we not have a fight on his blog, so, being a lot more stupider than he, I'm moving it over here. Fun, fun, fun.

Now, I'll a little trepidatious about doing this, because I know Botten of old, and, frankly, I'd rather not have the likes of him commenting on my blog. Yet here I am, inviting him to do so. Will I never learn? Tsk.

(So, this message for him:

Alex, any personal abuse or sweary ranting will get you banned from the comments. And yes, I am well aware that you will want, as usual, to feign ignorance and claim that you've never hurled any personal abuse in your life — to which my reply is that, in that case, continuing not to do so should be no great imposition. Cheers.)

Right. Since this thing atarted as a comment debate, I must apologise for the rather non-linear format that is usual to these things. If you're not used to messageboard fights, you'll get used to it quickly enough.

And on with the show.

Botten is one of those atheists who thinks that no religion has done anything good ever.

Personally I want to see ALL religion wiped from the face of the Earth. It's a poisonous non-thinking that has kept our species in a state of infantism for far too long. Teaching it in schools, or to children in any shape or form is tantamount to child abuse IMO. I suffered years of stress and unhappiness because of the way my parents insisted I go to their church and it has only been comparatively recently that I've been able to wake up on a Sunday morning without a feeling of dread in my gut.

Rather surprisingly, then, he argues strongly against the division of church and state:

[The judge] is right, [the Silver Ring] ISN'T a part of Christianity at all. The Judge was bang on the money. And if it's not for an upholder of the Law to decide who should? The Elders of the local church?

My reply:

> Personally I want to see ALL religion wiped from the face of the Earth.

Yeah, but by reasoned debate or by state fiat? We've seen what happens in states powerful enough to ban religion. It's not good.

> It's a poisonous non-thinking that has kept our species in a state of infantism for far too long.

Just off the top of my head, here are a few examples of things given to us by religious thinkers: the end of slavery; musical notation; the telegraph; Morse code; the sciences of geodesy and topology; the contraceptive pill (one third of the team behind it was a devout Catholic); clocks; that forgiveness is better than reprisal; the way to make pacifist resistance against a violent enemy actually work; freedom of speech; the separation of church and state; Special and General Relativity; algebra. It makes no more sense to deny the great good done by religions over the years than it does to brush all their evils under the carpet. I might add that the first eight of those examples weren't even just brought about by clever or good men who happened to be religious, but were developed specifically for religious reasons.

But you think Socrates was infantile.

> I suffered years of stress and unhappiness because of the way my parents insisted I go to their church

A lot of people (I'm not one of them) suffer years of stress and unhappiness until they join a religion that suits them. Their experiences matter every bit as much as yours or mine.

And now back to Botten:

> Yeah, but by reasoned debate or by state fiat?

I would hope by people realising for themselves what a world of shite religious belief is.

> But you think Socrates was infantile.

I didn't say that anywhere. Anyway, anyone who believed in the immortality of the 'soul', that he was picked by the gods, and that being 'morally upright' was something bestowed by the 'gods' (thanks, The Internet!) seems pretty backwards to me.

He may have been seen as one of the greatest thinkers of his time but a lot of his philosophies seem laughable to us now, living in a world that is far more enlightened than his.

> here are a few examples of things given to us by religious thinkers: the end of slavery; musical notation; the telegraph; Morse code; the sciences of geodesy and topology; the contraceptive pill (one third of the team behind it was a devout Catholic); clocks; that forgiveness is better than reprisal; the way to make pacifist resistance against a violent enemy actually work; freedom of speech; the separation of church and state; Special and General Relativity; algebra

What an absolute non-argument!! The development of these things were all entirely unrelated to the religious beliefs of the men and women behind them!

Let's have a look at some of those.....

> the end of slavery

A system endorsed by the Church for hundreds upon hundreds of years, even the 'god' of the Bible seemed to be pro-slavery!!

> musical notation

Some of which was banned, for being 'demonic'. And do you know something about the beliefs of the writers of the earliest known representation of musical scores? Cos I'm not sure I do 4000 years later....

> the sciences of geodesy and topology

Let us not forget the Church preaching that the world was flat, that the Sun orbits us.....oh, and torturing and killing people who didn't agree. And the Bible claims the Earth is only just over 6000 years old.

> Special and General Relativity

Einstein was probably an atheist, certainly an agnostic, NOT a believer.

> the contraceptive pill

....which many churches preach is a mortal sin to use.

> (one third of the team behind it was a devout Catholic)

...who must have been not so devout if he was involved in something that was an abomination in the eyes of his 'lord'

Your argument is the kind of nonsense trotted out by religious apologists all around the world, conveniently ignoring both the masses of non-believers who have done far more for us, and the context of the times a lot of great thinkers have lived through (times where, in some cases, not expressing a faith was tantamount to suicide)

> A lot of people (I'm not one of them) suffer years of stress and unhappiness until they join a religion that suits them. Their experiences matter every bit as much as yours or mine.

Sadly they are seeking comfort in lies and childish mysticism.

Again I say, the world would be a far better place without religion of any kind.

And that's where Gary stepped in, so this is where I move it to my blog.

Although Botten says that he never said Socrates was infantile (what he in fact said was that religion kept our species in a state of infantism. Since Socrates was both religious and human, that includes him), he does now say that he was backwards and his philosophies were laughable. I invite readers to compare Socrates with Alex Botten and decide for themselves which is the greater philosopher.

But Alex misses the key point: yes, our world is more enlightened than the times in which Socrates lived, but the reason our world is more enlightened than his is the contribution made to our knowledge by him and people like him. Einstein may have overturned Newton's theories, but he was only able to do so thanks to Newton's theories. When later knowledge supercedes earlier knowledge, it doesn't negate its contribution.

Botten wants religion to vanish

by people realising for themselves what a world of shite religious belief is.

That's hardly a defense of a judge dictating what is and isn't valid religious behaviour. Unless you think that people make up their own minds on issues by being forced to do so by the law.

Botten might well be right about Einstein — I should have checked — but as for the rest....

The development of these things were all entirely unrelated to the religious beliefs of the men and women behind them!

Note what Botten is claiming here: that Jesus's preaching of forgiveness was unrelated to his religious beliefs, and that Ghandi's pacifism was unrelated to his religious beliefs. It's certainly a novel interpretation of history.

[Slavery:] A system endorsed by the Church for hundreds upon hundreds of years, even the 'god' of the Bible seemed to be pro-slavery!!

Slavery was endorsed by every human society for our whole history. It was the banning of slavery that was the unusual event, and it was banned as a result of Christian thinking. Not only that, but the British Parliament decided that, having declared that slavery was wrong, it would be hypocritically immoral to leave the system in place everywhere but Britain. So they used their armed forces to ban it almost worldwide.

[Musical notation:] Some of which was banned, for being 'demonic'. And do you know something about the beliefs of the writers of the earliest known representation of musical scores? Cos I'm not sure I do 4000 years later....

No musical notation was ever banned for being demonic; music was banned for being demonic. And musical notation is not four thousand years old: it was invented around one thousand years ago by Guido Monaco. We do know quite a bit about his religious beliefs, because he was a Benedictine monk. He invented musical notation in order to record and to teach Gregorian chants — i.e. for religious reasons.

[Geodesy and topology:] Let us not forget the Church preaching that the world was flat, that the Sun orbits us.....oh, and torturing and killing people who didn't agree.

The Flat-Earthers are, contrary to poopular belief, quite a recent phenomenon: their movement really picked up in the Twentieth Century. Prior to that, it was generally known and accepted that the Earth was spherical — yes, even by the Church. The Church did preach that the Sun orbits the Earth, but Galileo, again contrary to popular belief, was neither tortured nor murdered for teaching otherwise.

Neither of these things, of course, has anything to do with either geodesy or topology. If it's important when the religious suppress innovation, it's important when the religious create it. You can't just ignore half the balance-sheet.

Gauss developed topology and geodesy in his quest to find optimal points on the Earth's surface for positioning observatories. He was concerned with observatories because he wanted the best planetary observations possible, because of his devout belief in astrology.

[The pill:] > (one third of the team behind it was a devout Catholic)

...who must have been not so devout if he was involved in something that was an abomination in the eyes of his 'lord'

Obviously, no-one knew for sure that the Church would oppose it until after it was released. One of its inventors (I wish I could remember his name) was indeed a devout Catholic, whose ambition was to create a form of contraception that the Vatican would not oppose. He had high hopes for the pill because it is made purely of hormones that exist naturally in the female body anyway. He failed in that aspect of his quest.

Your argument is the kind of nonsense trotted out by religious apologists all around the world, conveniently ignoring both the masses of non-believers who have done far more for us, and the context of the times a lot of great thinkers have lived through (times where, in some cases, not expressing a faith was tantamount to suicide)

I'm hardly a religious apologist. I just don't see why being wrong about one thing makes everything someone does reprehensible. Who are these masses of non-believers who have done far more for us than believers ever did? Considering the extent to which they're outnumbered, they must have been pretty damn busy. And do we really need to be told to consider the context of the times that historical figures lived in by someone who says that Socrates was backward?

Finally, Botten is annoyed that people who are made happier by religion

are seeking comfort in lies and childish mysticism.

What militant atheists never explain very well is exactly how that's harmful. I'm with Richard Dawkins when it comes to how the belief in an afterlife makes suicide bombing possible, but most people aren't suicide bombers. If a man lives an ordinary life, working in an office in Basingstoke till he's sixty-five and then doing the gardening with his wife till he's eighty, being kind enough to his children, watching some TV, giving a bit of money to charity, having the odd drink with his friends, does it really matter all that much if he believes something that isn't true and if that belief makes him happier than he would otherwise be? Why exactly is that a problem for the rest of us?

Just as religion isn't for everyone, neither is atheism. It may be true (I certainly think it is), but a lot of people say they find it alienating and lonely. I personally know one atheist who wishes he could believe in God because he knows that his atheism depresses him, and is exasperated at his own intellect's refusal to accept God's existence. The human brain is a complicated thing; there's more to it than rational deduction. And it's hardly irrational behaviour to want to reduce your own depression, even if you do so by believing something irrational.

And then there's the issue of specialism. I'm a musician. A lot of musicians get exasperated by the success of acts who create, well, bland one-dimensional simple music, while so much really clever and accomplished music goes unrecognised. But not me. There are so many areas of human achievement, and no-one has time to be interested in all of them. So, just as I can go on forever about augmented fifths and major sevenths but know sod all about mountaineering, there are people out there who devote so much of their time to studying the latest ropes and crampons that they have no time left to appreciate the deeper technical obscurities of music, so just listen to Westlife instead. There's nothing wrong with that: the music does all it needs to do for them.

Similarly, some of us are more interested in metaphysics than others. Atheism isn't a simple belief. As Dawkins himself pointed out, it's extremely counterintuitive: prior to Darwin, it was even irrational (yes, yes, I have heard of Hume, thanks; Dawkins points out what's wrong with Hume's atheism very neatly in The Blind Watchmaker, which is a damn good read). A lot of people don't want to spend ages studying evolution, which is a pretty complex thing to get your head around — and why should they? If someone's too busy developing new recipes or writing exciting screenplays to devote a big chunk of their precious time to deciding not to believe in God, I for one am happy to eat the food and watch the films.

The world's stupidest couple?

Well, it didn't take long for the new civil partnership ceremonies to reveal that gay people are every bit as nasty as straight people:

The civil partnership ceremony between Suzanne Mitchell and her lesbian lover Caroline Beddoes at Shrewsbury register office, on February 1, 2006, was a quiet affair.

....

But there was one small problem. Suzanne, 30, was still married to her husband Charles, 46, with whom she'd exchanged the same vows at the very same register office some six years earlier.

Even more bizarrely, Charles - the father of two of her five children - was still ensconced at the family home, albeit relegated to the sofa downstairs once 24-year-old secretary Caroline had replaced him in the marital bed.

This embarrassing state of affairs would have remained their little secret, had police not acted on an anonymous tip-off after Suzanne's "marriage" to Caroline imploded within two months and she decided she wasn't gay after all.

You'd think whether or not you're gay was the kind of detail you'd want to check before marrying someone of the same sex. Hey, it's just a thought.

Suzanne Mitchell's excuses are just great:

"The civil partnership ceremony was Caroline's idea. I felt railroaded into it because it was what she wanted. I thought it was just a blessing, not a proper marriage ceremony.

"I didn't lie to the registrar on purpose. Charles told me he was divorcing me, so in my mind I was telling the truth by saying I was single. I didn't think I needed to get divorce papers first."

To quote her is to ridicule her.

"I thought there'd be no harm in it, because I thought it was just a blessing on our relationship."

Yeah, and everyone knows that, as long as you don't actually marry your lesbian lover, merely having your relationship with her blessed while still married to your husband and living with your children is completely harmless.

As it turns out, this eejit of a woman is a good match for her twonk of a husband:

Charles, Suzanne and Caroline had spent an evening drinking together, when Caroline suggested all three of them go to bed together. While Mr Mitchell demurred and took to the sofa, the two women went upstairs.

As he lay on the sofa, Charles could hear his wife and Caroline making love as their baby daughters slept in the nursery next door. Why didn't he protest? Why didn't he rush upstairs and pull them apart?

"Well, no, it wasn't very nice having to listen to that," he says with staggering understatement. "But I decided that it was best not to overreact. They were drunk and Suzanne and I had been going through a rough patch."

Oh, fair enough, then.

As for the marriage:

"I didn't want her to go through with it, but how could I stop her?"

The bit in the ceremony where the registrar asks if there's anyone present who knows of any reason why the couple shouldn't marry? The bit where your embarassing uncle always coughs? Ring any bells? Never mind.