Vexen Crabtree's Blurty
 
 [Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends]

Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Vexen Crabtree's Blurty:

    [ << Previous 20 ]
    Monday, August 31st, 2009
    7:17 pm
    Self-Isolating Religious Groups, Mass Suicide and Belief in the End of the World!
    I have added large sections to "Religion, Violence, Crime and Mass Suicide" by Vexen Crabtree (2009) on Self-Isolating Religious Groups, Mass Suicide and Belief in the End of the World! Here is some of the new text:

    We saw the Jim Jones' Peoples Temple movement progress gradually from mainstream Christianity, through to a fully-fledged survivalist cult. An emphasis on the end times (when in Christian belief, apocalyptic wars and death scourge most of humanity) emerged slowly. Such ideas are present in most mainstream religions so it is hard to tell believers that it is a dangerous belief. Isolationism, extremism, idealism and an intolerance of people without the same beliefs: these are all commonplace across religious communities. Once you believe in some of those principles, it is hard to draw a firm line and stop a community progressing down a slippery slope to a place where they consider their ideals to be more important than human life. Such a slope met the Peoples Temple in the Jonestown disaster where over 900 of them lost their lives in 1978. Another American group, the Branch Davidians, also took on an increasingly them-and-us attitude. They started out with Biblical ideas about the cataclysms of judgement day, and ended up stockpiling weapons. It culminated with the Waco siege where over 80 of the religionists died during a shoot-out with authorities in 1993.

    Irrationality and susceptibility to believe some unlikely things about the universe can lead to ideals and sectarianism that separate 'others' from their humanity, and allow despicable acts to be undertaken. Aum Shinrikyo was the religious movement responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway that killed a dozen people and injured thousands. The movement had also already murdered others in order to protect itself. The leader believed in karma, and preached that murder was justified because it stopped people accumulating bad karma. He had picked up Christian ideas, and preached that such actions were an act of mercy, and started preaching about Armageddon. "Political failure and a feeling of national rejection led to increasing millenarianism"; again, the idea of a cataclysmic end of the world fuels seemingly insane bloodshed. The victims are not only the suggestible adherents of the movement, but the relatives, friends and communities that are affected by the religion's otherworldly aims.

    The rest is on www.humanreligions.info.
    Sunday, June 7th, 2009
    12:45 am
    Deceiving the American Public: How the Oil Lobby Manipulates the Press
    From my page "The USA Versus the Environment: Oil, Pollution and Kyoto" by Vexen Crabtree (2002).

    Many of the large oil companies are related, and together they have conspired (in history) to avoid legal pronouncements of their practices. Since oil and petrol industries have become under fire from environmentalists, moralists and activists the world over, they have fought back with well-funded public relations campaigns. These go as far as to supply their own scientists to argue against scientific truths and who appear on radio and news reports.

    “Within months of the UN producing its first report endorsing the idea of man-made climate change, in 1989, Exxon and other big corporations started setting up pseudo-groups. The first and biggest was the Global Climate Coalition which was soon lobbying in the corridors of power [...]. As a single example of its activities, the coalition made a classic appeal to the subconscious feelings of its American audience before the Kyoto conference in December 1997, when it spent $13 million on TV advertising, aimed at reining in the Clinton administration. It pitched the whole issue as a matter of freedom and patriotism. 'America has signed many treaties... but never a treaty of surrender,' was the key line in one advertisement, over a photograph of the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War.

    When Kyoto nevertheless produced an agreement to cut emissions, Exxon, in early 1998, helped to set up a new front group, the Global Climate Science Team. [...] Between 1998 and 2005, ExxonMobil alone spent $15.8 million on forty-three different front groups, according to research published in January 2007 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, who described this as 'the most sophisticated and successful disinformation campaign since Big Tobacco misled the public.

    [...]

    A columnist at the Daily Mail [...] Melanie Phillips [wrote] a series of outspoken columns denouncing the whole concept of man-made climate change. 'Global warming is a scam,' she wrote in February 2002. 'The latest evidence is provided in a report published today by the European Science and Environment Forum, in which a group of the most eminent scientists from Britain and America shred the theory.' However, the forum whose work she was quoting was, in truth, yet another pseudo-group, created with the help of two PR agencies (APCO Worldwide and Burson-Marsteller) with the specific intent of campaigning against restrictions on corporate activity; and the report to which Phillips referred in such glowing terms was recycled work which had been funded by Exxon.”

    "Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)

    My page which criticizes the mass media explains why such lobby groups find it so easy to insert content into the news:

    “Modern journalists work at breakneck speed to process stories as fast as possible. Therefore most news services rely heavily on public relations (PR) material in order to rapidly produce the stream of news. Much of this news comes from trusted wire agencies, but these also rely on PR input. Because of these pressures, public relations firms and commercial companies are having a heyday and find it easy to insert material into news media. In general, over half of all news stories are mostly PR or contain substantial PR-sourced material. Journalists themselves do not check the facts or figures of such inputs, nor admit in the articles themselves that PR material is the true source of the information, so the news often appears unbiased. Powerful commercial lobbies use this weakness to pervert public opinion.

    For example in the 1950s the smoking lobby created a waft of innocent-sounding and scientific-sounding groups in order to discredit government information about the dangers of smoking. Oil and petrol lobbies have spent fortunes on the same PR tricks, as have food industry lobbies. They produce scientific reports engineered by their own scientists, which serve to boost their own industries by deceiving the public. In short, don't trust the news media directly even when they are reporting on scientific-sounding research groups. Always check facts with long-standing scientific bodies such as the Royal Society. Rich and activist commercialist lobby groups have a set of well-practised and efficient methods for manipulating the news and public opinion. The scientists and welfare groups who wish to get real scientific worries about certain industries out into the open are not funded or equipped to run public relations campaigns. Only multinational information campaigns, legal agreements and inter-national political bodies such as the EU have the oomph to be able to fight back against such powerful industries.”

    "The Modern Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)

    This situation of large-scale misinformation can only be rectified by a strong government that is willing to stand up to the commercial-media free for all, but, during the period covered by this article the USA has had its politics dictated by commerce rather than by long-term good sense.

    Current Mood: thoughtful

    Friday, April 24th, 2009
    11:46 pm
    Thursday, March 12th, 2009
    7:40 pm
    Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls

    I've completely rewritten this page! The contents of "Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls" by Vexen Crabtree (2009) is now:

    1. Established Religions Become Default Religions
    2. People Say They Attend Services Twice As Much as They Actually Do
    3. Popular Religions Diversify and Encompass Many Beliefs
      1. World Religions as Umbrella Terms
      2. Laypeople's Limited Theological Vocabulary Hides Diversity and Artificially Boosts an Established Religion's Numbers
    4. Cultural Ties Distort the Statistics of Religion
    5. Vague Beliefs Get Classified as Concurring With the Dominant Religion
      1. Hidden Secularisation
      2. It is Popular to Mistake Theism in General for the Dominant Religion
    6. Minority Religions Become Under-Represented in Polls
    7. Conclusion


    Current Mood: busy
    Friday, January 16th, 2009
    11:10 pm
    Christian bus driver Ron Heather refuses to drive bus with atheist advert on it
    Christian bus driver Ron Heather in Southampton, who drives for First Bus, has refused to drive buses with the atheist "There is probably no God" advert campaign. Ridiculously, the company have been bending to his wishes and avoiding making him drive those buses, although both parties agree that if there is no other bus, he will have to drive one of them.

    This is ridiculous; imagine if vegetarians could demand not to work in places advertising meat-based food; if atheists refused to work in (for example council town halls) that display religious propaganda such as leaflets (i.e., opening times) from a local church.

    His personal pride and arrogance may seem fine to him, but he certainly hasn't given this much thought. If religious beliefs trump practicalities, then society falls apart amidst sectarian intolerance for almost anything.

    The daft Ron Heather forces society down one of two roads:

    (a) All beliefs are permitted to enforce their dogmas on others, leading to anarchy and chaos, and almost essentially, to the complete segregation of people into clusters, by beliefs, so that they don't have to see each other's religious symbols or adverts.

    (b) Hard secularism, where all religious statements are barred from the public sphere.

    Tell us, Ron Heather and First Bus (who are encouraging those like him), which route you want to take us down!
    Monday, December 8th, 2008
    9:30 pm
    Not enough time!
    There isn't enough time to write everything that should be written, or to quality-check everything that I've written so far! I need an editor, a helper, a spellchecker! Despite being academic, I like real life too much to be the recluse that I could be - meaning, I like communicating with people personally, in depth, and there is too much to take in, in life, to avoid going out into the world and losing yourself in it.

    Although you can get lost in life and enjoy it... the greater and harder path is the more solitary study and writing, the accuracy-checking and statistics-crunching, and it seems that it is this path that is worth something, whereas the former path is merely nice. It is so nice, it would be selfish (and unproductive for everyone) to pursue it too much.

    Current Mood: curious
    Sunday, November 30th, 2008
    2:29 am
    Satanism: The Absence of Satanic Proselytizing
    I've added a quote to "Satanism: Conversion, Deconversion and the Absence of Satanic Proselytizing" by Vexen Crabtree (2002). It is from the High Priest of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore:

    “We do not intend to turn the vast insensate masses into Satanists. The masses will do as always and follow their inertia.”

    "The Satanic Scriptures" by Peter Gilmore (2007)



    I like the way he states that the masses 'follow' their inertia (something which doesn't move). It implies an active passiveness, something which I think gets to the truth of the matter quite poetically!

    Current Mood: happy

    Monday, September 8th, 2008
    2:39 pm
    Genetically Modified Food and Meat Grown in Vats
    I've added the following sections to "The Food Chain: Modifications and Justifications!" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):
    1. Genetically Modified Food
      1. Synthetic-Natural Meats
      2. Genetically Modified Food
      3. God's Will Versus Genetics
      4. The Fear of New Food: Neophobia Trumps Rationalism


    Current Music: "Solitary (Signals edit)" by VNV Nation (1998)
    Friday, June 20th, 2008
    11:18 am
    Artificial Evolution: Human achievements prove the principals of evolution
    Added to "Evolution and Unintelligent Design" by Vexen Crabtree (2007, edit) (reference removed):

    If for half a dozen generations, no-one in the world had children with a blond mate, before long there would be no blond human beings. This is how strong the forces of sexual selection can be. If everyone in the world thought cats cute and bred the fluffiest, most child-like and domicile ones, Humans could create a whole new species. In fact, that is exactly how the Egyptians created the domesticated cat from the wild one. Nature did not produce our feline friends; we did. It took them hundreds of years to accomplish what nature does over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. How was it was possible for Egyptians to turn wild cats into a new species of domestic cats? Because they commandeered natural selection for their own ends. The result is artificial selection. It is the same process that exists in nature, but with the intelligence and willpower of humankind behind the driving wheel, instead of blind mother nature. Carl Sagan furnishes us with more examples of artificial selection:

    “Ten thousand years ago, there were no dairy cows or ferret hounds or large ears of corn. When we domesticated the ancestors of these plants and animals - sometimes creatures who looked quite different - we controlled their breeding. We made sure that certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. [...] Our corn, or maize, has been bred for ten thousand generations to be more tasty and nutritious than its scrawny ancestors; indeed, it is so changed that it cannot even reproduce without human intervention. [...]

    In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of wood grown by sheep from less than one kilogram of rough hairs to ten or twenty kilograms of uniform, fine down; or the volume of milk given by cattle during a lactation period from a few hundred to a million cubic centimetres. If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? [...] If humans can make new varieties of plants and animals, must not nature do so also? [...] The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.”

    "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan (1995)

    Our growing understanding of genetics results from our understanding of evolution. When we have mapped out genetic trees through history, tracing changes and predicting what fossils we have yet to find, we have frequently found those very intermediary species. Thousands of such missing links have been found, proving our knowledge of nearly every lineage. But all this knowledge is not just a bed-mate for paleontologists; our understanding of rapidly-evolving bacteria and viruses results in the development of new cures. Take SARS in 2002/3, for example. When several hundred people in China developed severe acute respiratory syndrome, genetic tests based on evolutionary theory led researchers in the right direction:

    “The disease soon spread to Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Canada and led to hundreds of deaths. In March 2003, a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, received samples of a virus isolated from the tissues of a SARS patient. Using a new technology known as a DNA microarray, the researchers compared the genetic material of the unknown virus with that of known viruses. Within 24 hours, they assigned the virus to a particular family based on its evolutionary relationship to other viruses -- a result confirmed by other researchers using different techniques. Immediately, work began on a blood test to identify people with the disease (so they could be quarantined), on treatments for the disease, and on vaccines to prevent infection with the virus.”

    "Science, Evolution and Creationism"
    National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine (2008)

    Fossil-record predictions and genetic kung-fu are two of the most exciting confirmations of evolutionary theory. Another is the record of what we have achieved so far. Our creation of cats, maize, the green carrot, cattle and sheep, and our deepening understanding of genetics is not to be feared. Nature has shown us how to combine genes to produce children; we have shown nature how much better, more nutritious, and safer, the animal and plant kingdom can be if only it is guided intelligently. Between nature and nurture, we have already created a genetically engineered world. We merely done it so slowly that no particular generation of humans was particularly shocked by the process.

    Now things have changed.

    “From factories and research laboratories to medical clinics, we are entering the era of directed human evolution. [...] For most of our history, we have been the passive subjects of change. In this new era we will take the direction of our evolution into our own hands.”

    "Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice" by Ronald M. Green (2007)

    We used our minds to domesticate animals and produce plants with unnatural yields. The method we used was to control the spread of genes in the chosen species, continually improving it. In this millennium, the method is the same but our tools are being updated. Instead of manipulating the spread of genes through sexual selection, we can change them from inception using genetic engineering. We can take genes that produce Vitamin C from one plant and import them into another; we can eliminate hereditary disease through genetic screening. We have made the present, and we will make the future. To say that we shouldn't is to say that we should no longer have cats and dogs, nutritious corn, or wool. None of these things have heralded the end of the world, and neither will the things to come!

    Current Mood: blank
    Friday, November 30th, 2007
    4:18 pm
    Rail transport is good!
    I have added some data from Friends of the Earth's "Fact sheet: Why travelling by rail is better for the environment" (2007) to "Public Transport is Good. The Advantages of Pooled Transport." by Vexen Crabtree (2007). Some factoids that are supported by this document:

    1. Train emissions of CO2 per passenger/Km are, on average, approximately half that of travel by car.

    2. Reduced use of fuel. "In 1999 UK road transport consumed 80 times as much energy as rail, while the distance travelled by road passengers and freight was only 15 times as much."

    3. You are 9 times more likely to die travelling by car than by rail.

    4. Carrying freight by rail results in an 80% cut in CO2 emissions per Kilogram carried compared to road haulage and can replace 50 lorry movements.

    The full page contains a fuller discussion and a more complete review of the advantages of public transport over private cars.
    Monday, September 17th, 2007
    8:02 pm
    EU Economic Power
    I've just added Ref.19 below, to: "The European Union: Democratic Values, The Euro, Crises and Migration" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    The European Union is formed from a collection of treaties dating back to the European Economic Community founded in 1957. It has changed from an economic body designed to prevent war, into a wide and varied economic, social and political tool which encompasses nearly 500 million people. "The EU is the world's biggest market, largest exporter, biggest aid donor and largest foreign investor"19.
    Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
    2:06 pm
    Invisible life!
    I've added the following quote to "The Food Chain: Photosynthesis and Trophic Levels" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):
    “A spoonful of good quality soil may contain ten trillion bacteria representing 10 000 thousand different species! In total, the mass of micro-organisms on Earth could be as great as a hundred trillion tonnes - more than all the visible life put together.”
    "The Origin of Life" by Paul Davies, p22



    Current Music: "Say Hello Wave Goodbye" by Soft Cell
    Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
    6:58 pm
    Starbucks
    My favorite starbucks drink this year:

    Hazelnut signature hot chocolate, venti, with cream.
    Sunday, July 29th, 2007
    4:32 pm
    International Humanist and Ethical Union
    Just awareness-raising:

    International Humanist and Ethical Union (www.iheu.org).

    The IHEU is the world union of Humanist, rationalist, secular, ethical culture, atheist and freethought organizations. Our mission is to represent and support the global Humanist movement. Our goal is a Humanist world in which human rights are respected and all can live a life of dignity.
    Sunday, July 8th, 2007
    7:49 pm
    The EU needs a multinational border force.
    Added some notes on Operation Nautilis II to: "The European Union: For A Combined European Border" by Vexen Crabtree (2007)

    The present system [of individually patrolled borders] is failing, especially in the new enlarged Union. For example, Fontex is attempting to shore up contributions from EU members to police Malta's southern (watery) borders, a project known as Operation Nautilis II, against illegal immigration from North Africa, espcially from Libya. But even this limited, specific weakspot is not given appropriate attention. Even nearby countries such as Italy do not contribute.16. The EUs new members struggle to cope. Prof. Monar elaborates on the reasons why the new entrants, now defining the Union's Eastern border, undermine EU immigration policy. Problems include under-manning; in both Hungary and Poland actual staff numbers of border guards in 2001 fell around 30% short, and Slovenia in 2002 had only appointed about half those it promised in its Schengen Action Plan14.
    Monday, June 25th, 2007
    7:25 pm
    The African Union: A model for an International Military Force
    Added to "Uniforce: An International Military Force" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

    Tying together the themes laid out above, the economic advantages of pooled military resources and the peace-ensuring nature of a pan-continental force as opposed to nationalist armies, Timothy Murithi summarizes the position of the African Union (AU) on its continued establishment of an African-wide peacekeeping force:
    “The AU intends to achieve much more in terms of integrating the African defence forces and reducing the overall costs that individual countries have to spend in financing their own military forces. This would in effect herald the creation of a Pan-African Armed Forces. This idea was championed by Kwame Nkrumah during the era of decolonization in Africa in the early 1960's. [...] The idea has gestated over the intervening forty odd years and now the sentiment is that an integrated continental armed force is necessary to conduct police action and peacekeeping operations across the continent. The obstacle of course is that many African governments, or rather the regimes of dubious legitimacy that control them, still retain egotistical state-centric attitudes. [...] The AU plans to have its own Pan-African Stand-by Rapid-Reaction force composed of 15,000 troops by the year 2010.”
    "The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding and Development" by Timothy Murithi (2005)

    The infant AU forces are sometimes more symbolic than effective, such as the 300-strong deterrent force in Darfur (Sudan, 2004). But as the aim is to enact AU intervention before situations escalate (Murithi p108), its permanent-natured force has much potential about it; and indeed, it has already acted quickly and effectively in many African conflicts, contributing well to the struggle for African peace.

    If only all continents housed such permanent reactionary forces! Their effectiveness has been proven in the cases where the United Nations and/or the African Union have deployed forces; even when such forces fail the fact that they sometimes succeed makes the established of a surer, permanent, Uniforce is given good practical-theoretical warrant.
    Sunday, June 17th, 2007
    11:33 am
    The Global Peace Index
    The Economist Intelligence Unit, in conjunction with an international team of academics and peace experts, has compiled an innovative new Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 121 nations [using] 24 indicators, ranging from a nation’s level of military expenditure to its relations with neighbouring countries and the level of respect for human rights [...], levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. The team has used the latest available figures (mainly 2004-06) from a wide range of respected sources.

    #1 Norway
    #2 New Zealand
    #3 Denmark

    Top 10 countries are now listed on: "Which Countries Set the Best Examples? The Global Peace Index" by Vexen Crabtree

    Current Mood: productive
    Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
    1:11 pm
    Death and the 100-year barrier
    In 100 years, will any of my life have been worth it? This is a mortally important question for me, and it compells me to a life of determination.

    I am propelled to create and produce intellectual and emotional output that will transcend my life break the 100-year barrier. Life is so short, fleeting, and even if the years seem long now one day, I will counting them down in earnest. I want my last years to be spent in memory of what I have achieved, in the knowledge that it will last forever and that even when outdated, anachronistic and replaced, my efforts will at least appear in the annals of history. This single drive is my response to the horror that death represents.

    Life is a party; a rollercoaster of wishes and dreams, dashed hopes and disappointments but their fullness and our navigation of these complex mazes is such an addictive game, that the stoic end is like a storm on the horizon, overshadowing everything. The picnic will only last so long as long as the winds of time keep blowing; the fair must close, and the 100-year barrier will come crashing down. It is such a dramatic, final, heartsoppingly impossibly black end, that no achievement seems to be long-lasting enough.

    That I feel this urgency about life is related to a fear. I am scared of disappearing into the forgotten past that ninety percent of the rest of humanity lay in. Every day should be a day devoted to longevity.
    Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007
    1:18 pm
    Oceans
    “Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.”

    The Devil's Dictionary

    The Earth is largely unsuitable for mankind, and the universe is so immensely massive that only an infinitely inefficient being could have designed it for us!

    "The Mistaken Homocentricity of Religion" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) looks at similar issues.
    Thursday, March 15th, 2007
    9:04 pm
    Einstein on the Scientific Method
    Added the following one-line quote from Einstein, to: "The Scientific Method: New Theories and New Facts" by Vexen Crabtree (2006):

    “New theories are first of all necessary when we encounter new facts which cannot be "explained" by existing theories.”
    - Albert Einstein (1950)

    Taken from "Ideas and Opinions" by Albert Einstein (click to buy the book from Amazon.co.uk).
[ << Previous 20 ]
Vexen Crabtree's Websites   About Blurty.com