I was asked today if I was a ‘liberal’. Now in all honesty, until quite recently, I would just have said ‘yes’ and moved on. Simple, easy, checks the right boxes. But the world is not as it was; liberalism has become infected with some appallingly bad ideas that we have to stand up to … Continue reading Socially aware, libertarian, scientific, secularist
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Protesters today expressing solidarity with the woman who was attacked.
It’s a case of double-speak gone mad.
On Wednesday lunchtime, at the Léo-Lagrange Park near the town centre of Reims, France, a 21-year old woman was sunbathing with two of her friends, dressed in a bikini. This is perfectly normal and if you visit any park in France in summer, especially a hot one like this, you will see plenty of women wearing swimsuits getting a tan. It’s a French passion.
However, the woman, whose name has not been disclosed, was spotted by a ‘group of five girls’. One of the came over and told her to ‘Get dressed, it’s not summer.’
The sunbather replied that the newcomer was not ‘the religious police’ and at that point all five of the girls attacked the woman, requiring her to be hospitalised. She was signed off work for four days.
All five of the attackers were detained. The three oldest, aged 18, 19 and 24, will appear before the court on September 24 to answer charges. The two others are minors and will be dealt with by the French juvenile correction system.
French law, like that in Scotland, considers all subjects of criminal legal action ‘sub judice’ which means that to publish the names or addresses of the accused is itself a criminal offence. The name of the victim has also not been publicised, probably for the same reason, since she will be a witness, but also likely for her own safety.
The city authorities have been very coy about discussing whether this was a race or religiously based attack, again, likely due to French criminal law.
However, there is other evidence. A French organisation called SOS Racisme organised a mass protest at the park in question for noon today, of people dressed in swimming costumes. If this could not be seen as a racist attack, why would this organisation be involved? And note: they were not trying to defuse anti-Muslim sentiment, but to express solidarity with the victim.
On Twitter, the deputy Mayor of Reims, Arnaud Robinet, described the assault as ‘intolerable in our country’ although he was later to state, in an interview on TF1, that there was ‘no proof of a religious motive for the attack.’ Why would he bother to say that if there were no reason to assume that it might be?
The French Twittosphere in general has been alive with allegations of a religious background to the attack while everyone official is, as usual, standing with their hands behind their backs whistling.
The newspaper that reported the attack, l’Union, checked and verified that anyone can walk down the high street in a bikini without breaking the law, unless a local bye-law prevents it. The city authorities in Reims confirmed that no such local ordinance was in place, so the victim of the attack was behaving legally, dressed in a manner that she had a perfect right to be. Are we to imagine that she was attacked by a group of militant nuns? Or a stray pack of radical feminists? Don’t be silly.
The nonsense of attempting to keep the religious or cultural background of the attackers secret is a joke. As soon as they have appeared in court, their names will be revealed and their religious affiliation quickly inferred anyway. Presumably the authorities hope that by then, everyone will have forgotten.
But that is not good enough. France is a secular state and if people of particular religious persuasions are acting outside the law in promoting the ideas of these religions, then that should be exposed and challenged publicly. It’s not as if this would be the first time Muslims had behaved in an unacceptable manner, especially in Reims and the surrounding areas.
If indeed the attackers are Muslims — and let’s not kid ourselves here, if there were no possibility of that, this would have been made known; the official coyness is proof enough — then very firm action needs to be taken, by the authorities, to stamp out the culture that is promoting violence. If that means closing mosques and other places where this poison is being disseminated, better sooner than later.
It’s curious though, that only yesterday I was writing about how Muslims need to understand and accept the principle of secularism and here they are, it would appear, doing the exact opposite.
There is no doubt that many shadows are looming large over Europe today. One of them just got bigger. Every time things like this happen, moderates are squeezed between religious fascism and common or garden fascism from the extreme right. Europe is in trouble, and its leaders do nothing.
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Having the kind of debate one has with Evangelists is a little harder in French than it is in English, at least for me, but I think I did OK. She seemed to like the bit about stardust…it’s nice and romantic.
He, however, brought up the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is etc etc’ canard. This is meant to show that the probability of Earth’s existence is so low that there must be magic, or as they would prefer, Divine Intervention, involved. Richard Dawkins debunks this in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ very nicely and I recommend it.
It’s a bogus argument because it proceeds in the wrong direction: we are already here. There is no probability about it. The actual probability of the Earth being where it is, is 1:1 or 100% because that is where it actually is.
But this got me to thinking and I did a little thought exercise. What would the probability of any one of us being born when and where we were?
That led me to do a brief Google and Hey Presto what do you know? I found myself at the blog of an author called Ali Binazir.
Ali addresses a slightly less extreme calculation by removing the specific location and time of birth, but it still works. It’s definitely worth a read and he also put up an excellent graphic which shows exactly what the odds are, and his method but here’s what he says in his own words:
‘Probability of your existing at all: 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000
As a comparison, the number of atoms in the body of an average male (80kg, 175 lb) is 10 to the power 27. The number of atoms making up the earth is about 10 to the power 50. The number of atoms in the known universe is estimated at 10 to the power 80.
So what’s the probability of your existing? It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.’
(The exercise was based on the US population, but even if we used a global sample the figures would hardly change.)
If the probability of any individual human existing is 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000 then statistically it is impossible for you to exist at all, in practical terms.
But this is a parlour game and that is exactly what the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is’ is too. The statistics say it’s impossible, and yet, here she jolly well is, and here we jolly well are too.
The point of this is to show that the logic being used is a nonsense. We are here, all of us. We are not a theoretical future being. The Earth is here and we are on it and we observe the universe from it. Using parlour games like this to show that this implies the existence of a ‘God’ is beyond risible. It’s right through the Tunnel of Stupid and out the other side into the Lake of Total Idiocy.
For the Anti-Apologist, it’s an amusing way to shoot down some of the more scientific-sounding Evangelists. However there are religionards who actually think that ‘God’ really does choose who shags whom and which sperm meets which egg. The Micro-Manager God, we might call this one. Definitely a deity with severe OCD.
The solution is simple: since we are now in the realm of statistics, what is the probability that an invisible man in the sky is hand (or Noodly Appendage) selecting every single sperm from every single ejaculation (including the moon-shots) and deciding which one will enter a specific vagina at the exact right moment and fertilise a particular ovum?
Well there you have it again — that is, by Ali’s method, 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000.
So in other words, statistically, there is 33,562 times less chance of God doing that than there are atoms in the known universe.
Get off my doorstep. Even if you are cute.
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I’m going to do a series on words and phrases. Some of these will be ones I made up, others will be borrowed. I’ll tell you which ones those are. First up, one of mine :-
Richard Dawkins is WRONG. He’s just plain wrong and even though his wrongness is perhaps understandable, that doesn’t change a damn thing.
Pic: Rod Fleming[/caption]
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