Fake News

For a change I am not actually having a go at churches or religion on this post, but pondering how the recent apparent moves to clamp down on "fake news" could impact them...

Religion is fake news!

Sorry if this sounds like I am having a go, I am not. Religion is about presenting unverifiable information as fact. That is what it is - I am not saying if that is good or bad, or if there is a god or not, just that this is how religion works, simple as that. Even if I was religious, I would recognise that a church is expecting me to have "faith" to believe unverifiable facts, that is the point, I think.

Firstly, if the information was not presented "as fact", I seriously doubt a religion would continue. This is just my opinion, but if saying "you may go to heaven but nobody knows" is not going to cut it. I have been to churches (mostly for weddings and funerals) and been shocked by the unequivocal statements made, the "you can be certain he has gone to heaven and is with Jesus now", etc. Certainly the Christian churches I have ever been to make statements "as fact", and I suspect most religions do the same for obvious reasons. If not, then great, let me know.

Secondly, the statements are unverifiable. This has to be the case. If the statements were verifiable then they would not be a religion but a scientist or researcher or teacher and there would be no faith involved in accepting the statements made. We would not call such an organisation a church or a religion in such cases. Indeed, religions make a point of the fact that the statements are unverifiable as a positive thing - that you have to have "faith" to believe the unverifiable, and this is somehow a good thing.

To be a religion the statements have to be made "as fact" and be "unverifiable", which is pretty much the definition of "fake news", surely?

What is fake news?

To be news something has to be presented as "fact". That is what differentiates it from fiction and hence not news.

To be fake, it has to basically be unverifiable or has to be verifiably false. Religions make verifiably false statements too.

So what happens if fake news is banned?

Well, for a start, it can't really be banned anywhere that allows "freedom or expression" and "free speech" I expect, but maybe that can be curbed where "presented as fact" when unverifiable, perhaps? I can see that being hard to manage. It can however happen on private platforms like Facebook and twitter if they so wish.

There will have to be exceptions for satire. This is arguably not "presented as fact" though - it is "presented in the style of actual news" but from a source that is clearly stated as satirical. So probably OK. The tricky bit here is that a lot of recent "real" news is so whacky you cannot tell satire from reality these days, which is quite scary when you think about it.

But what of religions and churches? Will they have an exception to allow them to continue to push fake news. Will they want one, as it is admitting that they push "fake news" if they ask for one?

If that is the case, how long before newspapers, and even Facebook, register as a religion / church? That would allow publication of whatever the hell they like (worse than now) under the cover of religious freedom. Indeed, I am almost surprised that has not already happened.

P.S. I like the Pastafarians, and of all religions I have heard of, Buddhists seem the most sane... Though I like the Norse gods if I had to choose... Thankfully I can choose "none of the above", which is a right I have that so many did not for so many centuries.

Flat Earth

I am confused by these people that say the earth is flat. There is a Flat Earth Society (with members all around the globe). There are conventions. It seems odd.

Now, let me say right away, I have no issue with fiction. There are groups of people that meet up, and create social organisations, all in support of some fiction, like a book or TV series or some such. One excellent example is Trekkies. These people go to conventions and clubs and have uniforms, and all sorts. It is amazing. It is, however, an escape from reality. We all like to get engrossed in a fiction of a book or a TV show or a film. All of the people involved in being Trekkies know it is "make believe". They do it, and it is fun, but it is not reality and they know it, even when dressing up as their favourite characters. I don't think a single one of them thinks there is actually a Starship Enterprise in orbit or that they are on the crew, or that they are actually a Klingon. They are a bit too much for me (and I like Star Trek), but they are not actually crazy - they have a fun hobby. They have a fun social group. Well done to them.

There are a lot of these fiction and fantasy type clubs and organisations - they create a common focus for a social group. We all want to be part of a group - and a liking and appreciation for some specific fantasy or fiction helps forge such groups and friendships. It is important. I rather like those that follow Terry Pratchett and discworld. That is a flat world too. It is not Earth!

But even those people will not think they actually live on discworld or have magical powers. They know it is fiction and "make believe" and fun.

It is quite amusing listening to my 4 year old grandson - he has a grasp of "pretend", and will sometimes "explain" to me that something is "pretend" if I play along too convincingly. Well done to him for understanding at such a young age. He still likes to pretend though. It is fun!

But this "flat earth" bunch seem different. Some will be "playing along" for fun, I am sure, but not all. Some seem to be sincere! They are people that somehow genuinely believe the world is flat? Yes, the world we live on! The one that we have pictures of from space. The one we can literally fly around on a plane for a small fee. With time zones and everything. The concept of a "flat earth" dates back a long time - and if you really lived your whole life in a mud hut communicating with a village of 100 people and no more you could believe it. But the concept was debunked millennia ago in so many ways, and today people have actually gone outside this earth and looked at it from space, from the moon even. We actually have satellite communications. People watch Sky TV beamed from a satellite that would only work if the world was what it is! They probably watch flat earth conspiracy bullshit via Sky TV even - how is that for irony?! There is no question whatsoever on this point.

So if the "flat earth" bunch were like Trekkies, playing a game, make believe, that would be fine. But it seems they are not. Either that or I am falling for a huge wind up. Am I?

If we accept the premise that there are actually people out there, and a lot of them, that actually believe the earth is flat - and even more - they believe that all of the evidence that proves otherwise is somehow part of a global conspiracy (to what end?), what does that mean?

Is it a problem if there are such people?

I think so. I think it is, at the very least, a clear symptom of something very wrong with society and the education system that such people could exist outside some sort of mental health facility.

Surely the most basic of education would cover this, and the basic science of the world in which we live. I bet I would have a hard time convincing my 4 year old grandson the world was flat - he has google earth on his iPad and loves it. He may be happy to "pretend" for a game, but he is not that daft so as to believe it.

To be clear, I have no issue with Trekkies or anything similar. They know it is make believe. They are "having some fun". We all like to escape from reality to some fiction. But when you start believing your fiction then you are mentally ill, sorry, plain and simple. If you actually thought you were Mr Spock from the Starship Enterprise, and persistently asserted that in real life, you stand a good chance of being locked up, and for good reason. Sorry, not "locked up", but "assigned to receive appropriate mental health treatment".

How is it that anyone asserting the earth is flat is not simply sectioned? Have a doctor go to a conference and literally sanction people and have them carted away? How is this not so?

To be fair, if you have absolutely zero scientific background, have never flown anywhere, or read about time zones (or read anything), and you are really poorly educated, you could fall for this. So explain to someone the reality of the world in which we live (the globe on which we live) and they understand, good. But if they won't understand then they are either educationally subnormal or mentally ill. How can it be anything else?

Is this not like religion?

Well, good point! A point someone made when I tweeted this. Personally I don't understand how people fall for religion. However, religion is somewhat clever. It never asserts something that can be categorically disproved, well, usually not. It will assert something which cannot be disproved because proving a negative is generally not possible. So it leaves a window for doubt among the gullible. So I am not going as far as saying that religious people are nut cases, not quite.

But even a religious person that claims god spoke to them and told them to kill their son, and so they did it, will get locked up - it has happened. Obviously, if that had been a story from a bible, it would somehow not be a case of mental illness, but in reality and in the here and now it is seen as such.

In some ways, maybe religion falls in to the same category as Trekkies. Maybe not, as I suspect a lot of people do not realise religion is all "make believe" as well. I bet a lot do though, even though they "practice" religion. They must know it is all "make believe" just to feel better, surely?

It is, perhaps, telling that no religion (as far as I know) proclaims the earth to be flat! They are not that daft. Tell me if one does :-)

Extremism

I am going to try and discuss some difficult topics here. I do not profess to be an expert on foreign policy or politics or even religion, so I hope I have not got this too wrong. I usually try to avoid religion if I can, simply because of the impossibility of a reasoned and rational debate on the matter, in most cases.

We are now seeing calls for banning of extremism. The wiping of such things from social media.

Now, I think I know where they are going with this. My understanding is that there are groups of people that not only have their own political agenda, but are actually quite good at "indoctrinating" people - so much so that they manage to create suicide bombers and suicide "mad stabbing rampage" nutters even, as we saw yesterday. Somehow people who may otherwise be normal and rational have managed to be convinced to take radical, and life threatening steps, in the name of some belief they now hold.

This is quite scary. It shows the power of such things, and is part of a problem with religion generally. I would not dream of picking on one religion here. It seems to me that all religions have the unenviable challenge of convincing people to believe something with no evidence. This is very contrary to our normal rational thought processes. I suspect some people are much more susceptible than others. Personally, I think we create this problem by bringing up children with belief in religion - we indoctrinate our children (well, not mine, but a lot of people do) in to some belief (the same one we learned when we were young). We force children to compartmentalise a set of irrational and unsubstantiated views and beliefs in a part of their mind that they can keep separate from their other sane and rational part of their mind - and wrap that irrational part in immutable walls of "faith".

I cannot help thinking that a child raised without indoctrination, even one educated on the ways of religion as a thing that exists in the world - like teaching of the old Norse Gods and so on - an interesting set of beliefs people once had and some people still have for the few religions still "alive" today - that such a child would be much harder as an adult to pull in to a cult and make in to a suicide bomber. Is this just my being optimistic, or is it true.

However, we see people use religion as a tool. It probably does not matter which religion they choose, most of them will have suitable wording in their holy texts that can be distorted to your goals with the authority of being ancient and revered. It is often said the the best way to turn a Christian in to an atheist is to get them to property read and study the bible, and I suspect the same is true for many religions. But being selective and however they do this brain washing, they seem to succeed in making human weapons.

So let's get back to the politics for a moment. We want this to stop. Personally, I think we need to be understanding the motives of the organisers - why they are doing this and what do they want? Can we work with them, as we have done in the past in terrorist disputes, to find common ground and an resolution to conflict? I don't know.

What we see cries for is to pull the extremism from the internet. This is hard, the extremism is exploiting religion. Even our own state religion (Church of England) has many dark things in the bible - things that will definitely count as extremist texts. To ban extremism is pretty much to ban religion - because religion is extreme - it is believe something with no evidence.

That may sound sensible to many, but sadly it has been seen not to work - once a meme is out there, especially one as old as most religions, banning it has the opposite effect and creates underground movements and followers. You have to tollerate it, allow it, tax it, much like alcohol. Banning it won't  work.

But even if you wanted to try and ban the most extreme bits, you have a massive problem, because there lies the curse of censorship and control of free speech. Where on earth do you draw the line? And how do you stop that line creeping ever closer to any thoughts that are not sanctioned by the thought police?

I really feel free speech, and freedom of expression, even by religious groups, is a human right we should not be compromising - especially at a time like this.

P.S. Yes, I am expecting this to be a tad controversial to some, so please do comment.

[also, for those that would rather listen to me than read...]

Rationality

I have been pondering rationality. We all (I assume) like to think that we are rational to some extent - that we consider the available information and make decisions to achieve the most favourable outcome. Of course, if it were that simple there would be no free will and we would all agree.

It is not that simple - for a start we do not all have all of the information, or the same information, and the information we have may be wrong. A key part of assessing information to make a decision is predicting the future, and we all have different luck and skills in that. We also have lots of bias based on our previous success in predicting the future. There are a huge number of psychological effects that are well documented that create lots of bias in our decision making processes.

The other obvious factor is how we decide what is a favourable outcome. We "feel" that we want certain things and certain outcomes, but what makes us feel that way is not necessarily rational in itself. Ultimately "what makes us happy" is a key factor, or perhaps "what we think will make us happy". I don't know how that comes about - our previous experience, genetics, what?

One of the reasons I was pondering rationality is seeing again the phrase "We are all atheists for almost all gods in human history, it is just that some people take it one god further". I was pondering the impossibility of debating religion with people. It is not totally impossible, but often one hits a brick wall where any rational debate falls down.

A rational debate involves one party trying to change the mind of the other - and if we assume people are rational then that means changing one of the parameters. Change the available information or change the perceived future prediction based on providing other experience of such predictions, or perhaps even change the views of what is a favourable outcome. It is not always possible, but in an ideal world it should be possible for two parties to agree the set of facts and rules and hence find that they have to agree on a decision.

I find it quite useful in a debate to try and get people to "step back", and try to agree on the desired objectives, and then how one measures success against those objectives. You can then back track to considering the alternatives and assessing against the agreed metrics to reach a decision on which all parties must agree (having agreed the test / metrics to follow).

Religious debates do not always follow such "logic", sadly. For a start - people are rarely prepared to specify their objectives in such debates!

If the world had one religion you could almost understand that the religious would not fathom the arguments of the non religions. But when there is a world with lots of religions, you end up with each group believing a set of arguments in favour of their own religion, but somehow dismissing the identical set of arguments presented by an opposing religion. It means that one person has to somehow hold conflicting logic and apply it differently depending on the context.

To be honest, that is a clever trick!

I am reminded of the electric monk: “The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder... Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”  One of its key features is described later "The man from the Monk shop said that it needed a whole new motherboard, but then pointed out that the new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to sixteen entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors, were twice as fast and at least three times as glib, and you could have a whole new one for less than the cost of replacing the motherboard of the old model."

Nuts on a plane

There have been a few articles recently on the behaviour of people on planes. The main ones that come to mind are issues over people putting the seat back and resulting arguments with the person behind, and more recently an article on ultra orthodox jewish men delaying a flight because they cannot sit next to a woman.

So, this got me thinking on what is "acceptable", both on planes and in society in general. As usual this meant a few odd nights composing a blog post in my sleep, and finding, rather annoyingly, that I still have to type the damn thing in the morning.

Freedom of faith

We live in a multicultural society, which means we have people with different faiths interacting with each other, and somehow we want society to continue to work. This is tricky.

Obviously, I could simply take a pop at any religion and pull it to pieces, but let's assume for the moment that it is "human nature" for people to believe stuff like this and there is not a lot we can do about that. Can we come up with rules that allow society to work but also allow some freedom or faith. Can we create impartial rules? Can we decide where to draw lines?

Obviously this is just my rambling views on this, but here goes...

Should we allow people to believe what they like?

Well, in general, I would say yes. As I say, there is human nature, and we cannot do much about it. If you try to ban people thinking in a certain way, they'll do it anyway. However, even this has to have some caveats. As a society we recognise that some people are vulnerable. This may be young people, or people that are stressed, perhaps after the death of a lost one, or people who lack normal emotional maturity. As a general rule we, as a society, want to protect such people and would not want people to get sucked in to some extreme cult any more than falling for some scam artist. It is, however, very difficult to draw any lines here - when is a "cult" an unacceptable scam, rather than a religion?

Believe what you like, in your own head.

I would say that we should not have any sort of "thought police". People with the mental capacity to make up their own minds should be able to believe what they like where it really has no impact on other people. And there is no reason not to allow such people to meet up and discuss things themselves.

Selling religion to others?

One of the things I dislike, but which is inherent in any established religion, is the way that the religion gets sold to others. That the religion tries to encourage others in to the belief. Some are worse than others, and some even go door to door with leaflets!

Personally, I would like to see religion controlled in the same way as any other business. I would like to see adverts subject to the same scrutiny. Saying "you will live on forever in heaven" is not acceptable as an advert, surely. Otherwise, what is to stop me selling broadband with a "guaranteed place in heaven for all customers". How is that different?

That said, there are organised religions that offer a lot of things, and they could advertise those. They offer a social group, with venues and events to allow people to meet and talk to like minded individuals. They offer "make you feel better that your life seems to have a purpose" even. They might organise social and charitable events and carry out community projects. These are all good things that I would have no trouble being advertised and encouraged.

Silly clothes?

Of course, saying people can do what they like as long as it does not affect others, has some issues. Silly clothes is one. I have no trouble with someone dressed up as Captain Kirk all day, but if a religion said you had to be naked at all times, we, as a society, would not find that acceptable. What if you had to cover your face such that you cannot be identified - OK mostly, but what of using a bank or passport check in airport? What if your religion says you have to wear your hair such that you cannot wear a motorcycle helmet? How far do you allow things?

Diet?

Restricted diets in one of those areas that always struck me as odd. Thankfully the issues are almost totally addressed by market forces - if enough people want food a certain way then food vendors cater (literally) for them.

At one end you have people with allergies, where the wrong food can cause serious and even life threatening reactions. We even have laws on food labelling because of this.

But there are also likes and dislikes. I am sure a lot of this comes down to what you are fed as a child - which makes sense - your parents having learned the hard way what is safe to eat, you learn to "like" that food. However I expect some is down to genetics - a group of people that dislike something that happens to be poisenous survive better. However it happens, it is not easy to change. I like marmite but some people do not, and force feeding them will not change their views on the matter.

In some ways restaurants and food providers cater for different tastes, offering a menu. But they are really not so good when asking about details "does this have mushrooms in it, as I don't like mushrooms" often does not work well.

Then we have choices of diet - whether "on a diet", or choosing to be vegetarian. It amazes me how much more catered for vegetarians are than people that like or dislike some foods.

But then you get in to faith based dietary requirements, and it gets complicated. Not just a matter of not eating certain things, perhaps at certain times of year, but rules on how things are prepared or how animals were killed.

As I say, fortunately market forces do handle this - there is a lot of choice of food, usually. Though planes are a slight issue, you can take your own food easily.

Planes...

Well, this is where it gets messy.

Planes have to be one of the worse cases of trying to make a multi-cultural society fit together - you are literally crammed in to a small space with no choice but to be so close that you cannot avoid contact. They are quite horrid - topped maybe by rush hour on the underground, but without the shortness of trip or option to get out!

I was amazed how much debate a recent discussion started simply on seat backs. If I pay for a place on a seat on a plane I surely have the right to use the features of that seat, including, if it does it, reclining the seat a bit to make it easier to sleep. I have been in the position of someone getting cross with me over this and I pointed out that I paid for extra leg room (exit row) and he chose not too - his choice to be packed in so much and he should live with that choice. It was not a very fair thing for me to say, but it did end the argument. There have been reports of much more serious arguments over such things. Some people have very opposite views that it is inconsiderate in the extreme to recline the seat. My real argument here is that the airlines pack people in too tightly, end of story. The people put on the spot are not to blame.

But then we get to the orthodox jewish men that cannot touch a woman unless married so refuse to be seated next to a woman - delaying the flight until other passengers agree to move around.

One of the interesting outcomes of such a debate was the idea that the airlines should be more accommodating - not just asking about special dietary requirements but also special seating requirements. They could then put people in seats that are compatible.

• Allow people to pay for an exit row seat for more legroom, as some do now
• Allow people to say if they are orthodox jewish men that cannot sit next to a woman
• Allow people to say that they must not be sat next to a fat person
• Allow people to say that they must not be sat next to a black person

Ooops - that escalated quickly - there is a (no doubt made up) story of a woman that complains that she must not be sat next to a black person, and the flight attendant manages to arrange an upgrade ... for the black person - because nobody should be forced to sit next to a bigot.

How is insisting on not being next to a black man any different to insisting to not being next to a woman? Why would we allow it because it is someone's faith. Apparently it is also not allowed for them to flay over a cemetery, but should that mean they can dictate the flight path?

Can I start a religion that does not allow me to have things touching my knees? That way I could always be sure of an exit row seat and leg room?

We had another interesting report of someone that was allergic to nuts and the plane staff announce nobody is to have any nut based food (closed air circulation, and all that). That actually happened on a flight I was on - where we had not booked a meal and had (you can guess!) peanuts, a snickers bar and peanut M&Ms as snacks to eat on the plane, and me going hypo. Thankfully we found some crisps. There have been reports of such a case where someone ignored the warning, caused a reaction, and he was banned from flying (ever!). Now, if banning someone from flying is actually a valid and acceptable option I could argue that banning the person with the allergy actually reduces the inconvenience to passengers as a whole. I know that is not the PC thing to say but it is the maximum passenger benefit equation. Of course, the argument is that the person with the allergy cannot help it - a valid argument. I do wonder if "stressed at being packing in a tin can for 8 hours" would ever count as a disability and mean the guy with the nuts "could not help it" either.

I do wonder if there are conditions which really are incompatible for people packed on the same plane. The nut allergy is not quite one, as people could simply avoid nuts, but what if there are cases where you simply cannot put two people on the same plane for 8 hours without some issue which neither of then can help? Who wins? Who gets kicked off the flight and who stays, and how do you decide.

At the end of the day religion is a choice, as it getting on a plane and subjecting yourself you a set of rules that are unpleasant. My overall view here is that, unless you are prepared for the indignity and inconvenience of a flight, then don't take one. Or pay for better seats. Don't force others to accommodate you. This is not denying your faith - you have a choice to fly or not - make that choice in accordance with your faith. Am I wrong?

Should I avoid religious posts?

I was going to post comments on the story about some religious people on a plane refusing to be seated next to a woman as against their faith (they must not touch a woman unless married, as I understand it). There are many stories and views on this, and I was finding I was formulating my own views and arguments around the topic.

But then I was thinking a religious posting would be a bad idea.

But then I started thinking that there is something wrong in the world if I feel pressured, even if it is just somehow my own perception that makes that pressure, against posting on a topic.

I do believe in freedom of speech. Opinions being voiced can only ever be good, on balance, and I "believe" that to be true. Even bad and wrong opinions can be voiced, and discussed and counter arguments made. Open discussion is good, I believe.

So, should I avoid posts on religion, or should I go ahead?