A quick message for those that come to Birmingham SitP

What makes a good Skeptics in the Pub?  This is a question that, believe it or not, gets a lot of debate amongst SitP organisers. There’s a variety of potential factors that are believed to make a difference. These range from the location of the venue, the range of speakers on offer and the quality of the advertising. I don’t doubt that these things, difficult to quantify as they are, nonetheless have an effect. But last Wednesday at Deborah Hyde’s talk at the Birmingham SitP I had a bit of a revelation on this.

 The talk was a real pleasure for a number of reasons. For one she was wonderful to have as a guest. Great to talk to, mixed easily with the crowd and all through the failing projector episode she never flustered or panicked unlike my good self.  Also her talk was expertly prepared, flowed and was entertaining and informative. She conducted a mammoth Q and A with patience, humour and the confidence of somebody that really knows their subject. But that’s not all that struck me.

 On that Wednesday I’d had a horrible day and had arrived flustered and stressed. By the end of the night I’d got a big grin on my face and was feeling good. Deborah, like many speakers we have had, was struck not only by the size of crowd we get but the warmth and the interest. There is a definite good vibe in the room, if that doesn’t sound too hippyish. That’s when I had my moment of realisation.

By talking about choice of venue, speakers and all the other stuff we are in some ways missing the point. I don't doubt it makes a difference but what really matters is the people that turn up. I know that you can argue that without those things being right we wouldn’t get the people in the first place, but I don’t care. The good humour and friendly expectancy of the Birmingham crowd  is great. If it wasn’t I’m not sure, as organisers, we would be as motivated to get all that other stuff right in the first place. Just looking through my Facebook contacts there are so many people that I now count as friends that I’ve met there or at the socials in the last couple of years it’s remarkable.

This unusually unskeptical and somewhat schmaltzy blog post is therefore a long winded thank you to all the fantastic people that come to Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub. We really appreciate you and you’re great.

Patrick Redmond (@paddyrex) is one of the organisers of Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub.

Weekly Roundup w/e 27/02/2012

It’s time for the weekly scientific and sceptical smorgasbord we like to call the roundup. So let’s grab a plate and elbow our way in before all that’s left is the pickled cucumber. I love it when predictions come true, not the Psychic Sally type (as you read this I’m getting an image of somebody called Mary… Marvin… Gavin… Kevin… John, that’s it John!) but the proper scientific type. All round genius and hero Alan Turing posited a theory over fifty years ago as to the mystery of how patterning occurred on animals. New research takes a step towards providing evidence for his idea.

We all know the mantra, if it doesn’t work properly check the cables, switch it off then switch it back on. The New Scientist brings us the latest on those faster than light neutrinos that had us so perplexed a while back. And from the same publication an exploding star casts its light over the story too. If you’ve got time pop along to the NewsBiscuit who put their own comic slant to the subject .

Creationism continues to try and work its way into the classrooms and from there the minds of the children of America. Fortunately there are still a number of people standing against superstition and irrationality. I wonder if one of those is Republican candidate Rick Santorum, he’s always had a keen eye for the real problems that stalk America?

And lest we get too smug with our skeptical selves Daniel Loxton takes a step back to look at what it means to even call yourself a skeptic in Tribal Skepticsm. Does he have a point?

Why don’t we do chiropractic next? Actually there are lots of good reasons not to do chiropractic and they’ve been in the news again.  Edzard Ernst reports as the President of the British Chiropractic Council writes about their decision to sue Simon Singh for Libel.

One from our conspiracy loving friends over at the True Activist about how Big Pharma are keeping secrets from you? When you’ve read that look around the site and you’ll find that there are all kinds of stuff that lots of people know that ironically is being kept a secret at the same time, such as the suppression of scientific advance. I think my IQ just dropped a couple of notches.

Little things please little minds they say. Before I descend into all too predictable innuendo lets divert into the world of nanotech and the promises therein.

Some say that atheists pick soft targets when they argue against religion. Soft targets or not sometimes the truth of what is done in the name of religion is despicable.

For somebody as busy as me (subtext – disorganised) sleep is something that I am often short of. I therefore found this article on the BBC website comforting as they challenge the myth of the 8 hours a night regime.

Let’s face it, Google are everywhere. They’ve probably been down your street, photographed your house, mapped out your garden and know what your favourite brand of cereal is. Love them or loathe them I spend acres of time on their sites and this is only going to increase with the announcement that the Great Barrier Reef is going to get the Streetview treatment on Google Maps. Make sure you have a look at the demo to get a flavour of the joys ahead.

So many people want to move away from that old fashioned stereotype of scientists as wild haired bespectacled professors. But sometimes you just have to embrace the fact that not all science communicators can be mop haired, smiley Mancunians and so let’s hear it for the wonderful Prof Martyn Poliakoff.

There’s a video at the end placed subtly to keep your interest in this bit where I plug things, so don’t stop reading. First off congratulations to our friends at UB:ASH who just held their fantastic Reason Week of events, a major achievement. Don’t forget that there is still just time to sign up for the wonderful QED Conference in Manchester, I was there last year and it was brilliant. We have a tab up above for the DVDs that we have begun to produce, so please click and have a look, more will be added as we do them. And don’t forget our next great event with the wonderful Deborah Hyde, Unnatural Predators: The Folklore of Fear.

We’ll end with Carry Poppy’s experiences of curing her cold with homeopathy. See you all next week.

This week's roundup was compiled by SitP co organiser Patrick Redmond (@paddyrex) aided as ever by the suggestions of the wonderful Roy Beddowes.

Weekly Round-Up w/e 19/02/2012

Image: Tom Whyntie/CMS/CERN

Quarks, gluons, red giants, white dwarfs, big bang. There are eight billion stories in the naked universe, here are a just a few of them in the Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub Weekly Round-up; trawling through space and time but mostly the global system of interconnectedness so you don’t have to.

Have you watched our Andy McIntosh talk on DVD yet? If you want to get hold of your own shiny boxed-up copy let me refer you over to the DVD page where Chris has handily laid out the contact and purchasing details. We’re still interested in your reactions and opinions so keep sending us your feedback.

Did you see that particularly snazzy looking solar system t-shirt Alice Sheppard was sporting for the last Sitp Talk? Well, here's another astronomical representation, except this is a box of chocolates, and it costs a hefty 3800 Yen; that’s £30GBP to you and me. Go on; indulge yourself with some chocolaty goodness and giggly Uranus puns. More space calories here and here. Resistance is Delicious.

Sticking with space stories: A Martian meteorite , an incredibly rare object, has been given to science to help unravel the Red Planet's secrets; Rock star Sting narrowly misses out on a having a Meteorite on his doorstep; and, with no need to reach for the Google incognito window, some elliptical dwarf on dwarf action.

Back on terra-firma, I don’t know how I missed this, call myself a Brummie! Apparently there’s something called The Dudley Bug. No, it’s not a virus that makes you talk funnaay, sorry, erm, funny; it’s a Trilobite, which also features on the original Dudley coat of arms. These critters can be found in the sedimentary rock exposures left over from old mine and quarry workings in the West Midlands; hard to imagine that this area was once covered by warm tropical shallow coral seas. (Tip o’ the hat to Birmingham University’s Mark Pallen for this nugget from The Rough Guide to Evolution.

If you’re an avid book reader then you may sympathise with Julian Smith’s obsessive feelings.

Studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Coffee enema vs. chemotherapy study and Energy Chelation are dubbed “brain-meltingly bad.", "magic, faith healing," and laughable.

Physicists have come up with an equation that explains and predicts the shape of a ponytail.

This is enough to make your blood boil:-

• South Africa National Parks has reported that just six weeks into the New Year, at least 54 rhinos have been slaughtered for their horns. “Put it this way, works for me." says consumer of illegal powdered substance from endangered species, Elle Macpherson.

• Toxic drivel: Homeopathy for domestic violence. Pseudo Living responds.

We’re a romantic lot here at Brum SitP (even though we know it’s really just a heady cocktail of chemicals at work) so we couldn’t let Valentine’s Day pass us by, especially when there’s some cool science references thrown in. Have a look at what CERN, The Bad Astronomer  and DNA Lab have lovingly put together. Click through on the CERN link to Suzie Sheehy’s excellent Valentine’s poem with an equation from SitP favourite Matt Parker.
Oh, the agony of de feet… Study debunks ionic footbath detox claims.

A faith healing television channel has been fined £25,000 by media regulator Ofcom over a series of breaches, including a televangelist who claimed that he could help individuals with serious illnesses using "miracle olive oil soap".

Well if we’re going to have a magic soap story then it’s only right that a magic water link should follow: Water twiddlers micro blog too - Free Homeopathy consultations on twitter. Hmm, can you recommend something for a severe case of RFI - Repetitive Face-palm Injury?

A couple of stories from over the pond: In an article from the Financial Times, Julian Baggini takes a look at Atheism in America, while in Texas, ex-Christian Matt Dillahunty from The Atheist Experience gives an impassioned response to a caller during a live discussion on The Real Cost of Religious Faith.

Get your irrational proposals here: An Irish Parliamentarian has proposed a change in the law regarding car registration plates, to allow motorists to avoid license plates that contain the number 13.

It’s only been a short while since my last tour of Nam, though looking at the line-up of speakers at this year’s Science Festival , Cheltenham is going to be worth a second visit between the 12th and 17th June. This year’s theme is ‘X’, from X-Men to X chromosomes. Download the comprehensive festival guide for more details.

From the Council for Secular Humanism: Hitchens from beyond the grave, in defense of Richard Dawkins.

Brain Pickings is an excellent resource for extraordinary and interesting articles. Here’s a lovely collection of six vintage-inspired animations on critical thinking aimed at children aged 8-10. The films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government.

Warning! Graphic depictions of morally reprehensible acts ahead. An amusing piece on why god hates checkered whiptail lizards.

An 83-year-old Belgian woman is able to chew, speak and breathe normally again after a machine printed her a new jawbone which has proven to be as functional as her own used to be.

Religion is being "side-lined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere", Conservative co-chairwoman Baroness Warsi wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph. Crispian Jago and the Daily Mash fire off a couple of satirical broadsides while Polly Toynbee and Martin Robbins respond from the pages of The Guardian.

Time to cosy up: Sam Harris-The Fireplace Delusion & Hate mails with Richard Dawkins.

From Sci-ence: Which embryo is human?

Iranian women ninjas:: In a society that treats them like children, sports and especially martial arts offer a way to express strength and independence.

Bringing this week’s Round-up to a close there’s just space to remind you that Deborah Hyde will be with us on March 14th where the theme will be Unnatural Predators, the malign supernatural and the folklore of fear. Don’t forget, we’ll also be clinking our skeptical glasses together for Galileo in the Old Contemptibles at our February Social.

Here’s a trio of movies to send you on your way: The excellent  Helen Arney with You and me and Walt Disney ; like a surreal Busby Berkeley movie, some quite bizarre formation dancing; and from KMel Robotics, a swarm of Nano Quadrotors.

This week’s Round-up was compiled by SitP regular Roy Beddowes.

Weekly Round up w/e 12/02/2012

Hello and welcome to this week's round-up. Plenty to get through with some big stories around.

Firstly, many thanks to Alice Sheppard for her wonderful talk on Wednesday. That night also saw the first sales of our DVD of Andy McIntosh's talk and the first chance to get tickets to see Robin Ince do his first Skeptics in the Pub, with us, in May. The DVD will be available at future SitPs for £3 or you can order one online by emailing skepticaldvds@gmail.com. Prices are inclusive of p&p - £4 to the UK, £5 to the EU and £5.50 worldwide (They are region free). The DVDs are produced by volunteers on a not-for-profit basis and all profits are donated to Birmingham Skeptics. More tickets for the Robin Ince talk will be available at our next meeting which is Unnatural Predators with Deborah Hyde on Wednesday 14^th March. Don't forget our Social at the Old Contemptibles on Wednesday 22^nd February either.

The nominations for the Skeptic Awards were announced this week, which I hope a lot of you voted for. Among the nominees you will find previous speakers and many of the websites we point to on our round-ups. Each and every one is worth a visit.

Following on from a link several weeks ago here are follow-ups to @jdc325's post on why people write about homeopathy, highlighting the entertainment value and risks. This week people have pointed us towards pages where Homeopaths have prepared “treatments” for AIDS and remedies based on words written on a bit of paper. Worse still, World Homeopathy Awareness Week has been announced targetting infertile couples. I'm sure they'll claim success for anyone who happens to fall pregnant after being duped into buying sugar pills. Pity about all of the others though.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is hoist by its own petard here in an excellent argument for its rejection as a valid medicine, and another article explores the fantasy of placebo as exploited by CAM advocates. From the Quackometer comes an article highlighting a new and highly expensive method of Autism “diagnosis” championed by Melanie Sykes and the BBC reports on a new programme to see if simple exercies will boost pupils' results. Exercise is good for you so the answer may well be yes. Let's just hope the findings aren't trumpeted as a triumph of pseudo-scientific twaddle or ignoring the simple effects of children receiving attention and resources. Speaking of pseudo-scientific twaddle, here we have a list of Doctors from Josephine Jones. Or are they?

Unfortunate news from Bristol as it seems there is an unprecedented rise in Measles cases, unsurprising if this rampant case of Anti-vax denialism is anything to go by.

In Carmarthenshire a bogus therapist and his wife have been found guilty of sexual assault and fraud using unpleasant methods I won't go into, and a teenager in Washington State was unfortunate enough to have faith-healers for parents. They've been charged with second-degree murder after he died from appendicitis.

Moving onto religion, it will have passed few people by over the last few days to see that Council's placing prayers on a Council agenda has been officially deemed unlawful. It is unsurprising that it is outside a Council's powers to summons Councillors to pray, with penalties if they do not attend. (Judgement in full). This hasn't stopped front page screaming headlines from the Mail and Times (twitpics), both rather missing the point. This, coupled with the loss of an appeal against a judgement that two Bed and Breakfast owners shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against homosexuals who wish to share a double bed led to frothing at the mouth from the Mail saying that gay rights trump those of Christians, Nadine Dorries claiming the removal of the Christian fabric of our society, and George Carey, former Archbish, claiming that their right to bigotry should be protected. Carey is also happy to back a psychotherapist who claims to be able to cure  homosexuality (as reported last week). Nice man.

I make no connection between those links and this one, which states that Right-Wingers are more likely to be less intelligent than Left-Wingers (link to Mail again, sorry). Whether this stands up to scrutiny or not, Charlie Brooker's take on it is worth a read.

What most rabid commentators seem to miss is that the Council case predominantly relies on the Local Government Act 1972 and therefore doesn't apply in other situations however David Allen Green points out that a similar situation exists in that oaths given in a courtroom are both required and have no effect at the same time.

Elsewhere, there is a government visit to the Pope to see what his particular invisible friend thinks about things, US Catholic Bishops seem to be out of touch (!) with US Catholics and there is some life-threatening religious bigotry going on in Indonesia. As for this guy, Nicholas Pfab, well, I'm not sure what to say about him. Here's a collection of some other things being done in the name of religion.

In Science news, it seems there is little likelihood of a pardon for Alan Turing and the death of Roger Boisjoly has been announced. The name meant nothing to me, but he's one of the engineers that argued to halt the Challenger launch and had his career ruined for doing so.

The BBC has a report on the successful setting up of the Very Large Telescope and here's a rather nice video from John Butterworth on entropy.

Following the announcement that Russian scientists have managed to drill down to the sub-glacial Lake Vostok, it's nice to know that Vladimir Putin hasn't drunk any so he won't turn into a dinosaur. I'm guessing his maths is only 60-odd million years out. As for his logic...

Two pieces on writing papers now. The first highlights the perils of bite-size science and the second is looking for reports of failed experiments for The Journal of Errology.

In libel news, Paul Chambers' Twitter Joke Trial Appeal was heard this week. The judgement may be before Easter. Here's Al Murray's take on it in the Guardian.

Lastly we come to one of our previous speakers and the hero of the week. Matt Parker, the stand-up mathematician who challenged a thief stealing a phone from an unattended bag on a train. It's made national and transatlantic news, (although they call him English) not least because Matt took a considerable length of video footage of the perp, who seemed happy for him to do so, so I'll leave you with one question. Do you know this man?

This week's round-up was written by Chris Richardson (@christheneck) with some additional links provided by Roy Beddowes.

Weekly Round-Up w/e 5/2/12

Welcome, the round-up is here once again.  We’ve got lots of exciting things this week.  As well as the usual interesting things from around the web we have a few announcements of our own.  We have some good news about an upcoming speaker we’ve just announced.  Our very first DVD as well.  Details are all below.  For now, let’s get on with the round-up.

Let’s start of with the good news.  Comedian and organiser of the godless Christmas shows Robin Ince is going to be our May speaker.  His shows tend to sell out theatres so we expect it’ll be a tight fit in The Victoria.  Those who attended Jon Ronson’s talk will remember how uncomfortable it can get so this time we’ll be selling tickets to control numbers.  The tickets will only be £2.50 each, around the same level as the normal suggested donation.  You can get tickets from each of the upcoming talks, we won’t be selling them online so if you want a ticket, make sure you come along.

Many of us had chemistry sets when we were younger but some of us continued and went further, to the point of developing new medicines and splitting the atom in the kitchen.  Jon Ronson looks at the world of home experimenters and home experimentation gone wrong.

Nick Cohen talks Salman Rushdie and censorship.  The terror of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa has faded but the challenge it posed to artistic freedom has not, as a brush with the Indian authorities has shown.

So, what did you think of our visit from Andy McIntosh the other week then?  We asked for your opinions and you gave them to us.  Here’s a blog post with the rather interesting replies.

Did you miss the talk?  If so, fret not, we filmed the talk and will be selling it on DVD for £3.  If you want a copy, you can collect it on Wednesday night, let us know if you want one by emailing us at birminghamskeptics at gmail.com and we’ll bring you one along.  If you want one posting to you, pretty much anywhere in the world, it’s the same price but you’ll have to pay postage. We’ll have full details soon, in the meantime just email us.

When you watch the DVD, one of the first things that’ll strike you, after your amazement at the quality of the mastering by Chris and the cover design by Paul, is the excellent music.  This was done for us by DJ, remixer and producer Nathan Jay.  Listeners of the Richard Herring and Andrew Collins podcast would know his work.  Have a look at what else he’s done here.

You know that health bill that’s going through that some assert benefits private healthcare providers?  Imagine if the minister in charge of it had received financial backing from a private healthcare provider.  No need to imagine, the telegraph has the details.

Galileo’s Finger by Peter Atkins is based around 10 great ideas of science that have emerged since the time of Galileo and covers evolutionary theory, genetics chemistry, quantum theory, cosmology and mathematics.  Former Birmingham Skeptics regular and now neuroscientist in Norway Tulpesh Patel reviews the book here.

Staying on Tulpesh’s blog, here’s a summary of a talk he attended on the weaknesses and strengths of the climate change debate.  Looks like he’s found a replacement for Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub in Norway. It’s OK, we always knew he’d find something else, we’re not upset. Excuse us for a moment, we have something in our eye.

Alternative medicine practitioners in Australia are fighting claims by a 400-strong lobby group, called the Friends of Science in Medicine, that techniques such as acupuncture and homeopathy are pseudoscience.  The article states that new research from the University of Adelaide has shown that when diagnosed with cancer, more than 50 percent of Australian men are turning to alternative medicine to help find a cure, or to improve their health.  No wonder the alternative medicine practitioners are up in arms, that’s a lot of business to fight for.

Want to brush up on your skeptical skills and knowledge? Well, you’re in luck, Token Skeptic has knocked up a skeptical reading list here in graphic form.

Them Catholics have got themselves a nice card which says what a Catholic does. It only mentions the nice things though. I didn’t see a line stating that ‘as a Catholic I promise to condemn millions to suffering and injustice to uphold traditions that will secure the politcial stability of the Vatican elite’.  Anyway, The Guardian asked folks of other faiths, including humanists, what would be on their card.

One of our previous speakers stirred up a bit of controversy this week.  Hayley Stevens found herself in the Daily Mail, Fox News and other grubby places after an ASA complaint she made was upheld.  She’s been accused of being a group generally opposed to Christianity and an unofficial media adviser for some reason.  Here’s her reasons for the complaint.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, is backing Lesley Pilkington who’s a Christian pychotherapist that offers to ‘cure’ gay men of their homosexuality.  Her therapy was described as "absurd" by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.  Who needs evidence when you’ve got bigotry?

‘Psychic’ Sally is suing the Daily Mail for calling her a scammer.  It’s one of those court cases that you’d like to see both sides lose.  The story in question was written by Paul Zenon (who’ll be speaking at QED).  Former Birmingham Skeptics speaker Ash Pryce had something to say on this.

Good old Brian Cox, he was credited with inspiring a surge in the number of teenagers studying maths and science at ‘A’ Level.  Now he’s been credited with sparking an interest in astronomy in Britain.  As you know, Brian Cox was little heard of until his picture was featured in The Sunday Times in an article about us at Birmingham Skeptics.  I think we should take a little of the credit.

Those who do love their astronomy are in for a treat, Alice Sheppard is coming to speak to us on Wednesday night.  Her talk is called ‘When the Universe came to the people. Citizen science for skeptics.’  You can find the details here.  Make sure you come along.


This week’s round-up was put together by Paul Bryant (@thebigyeti)

Some Views of "A Skeptical Look at Atheism"

As many of you are aware we had Professor Andy McIntosh come and talk to us at Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub on “A Skeptical Look at Atheism”. Andy is an Emeritus Professor in Physics, specialising in thermodynamics and is also a Young Earth Creationist on the speakers list for Answers in Genesis. His talk was, to say the least, different to the usual that we have at Skeptics in the Pub. The Q and A session wasn’t nearly enough to address everybody’s questions and comments and so we thought we would crowd-source a few for interest. I was going to summarise and edit the views sent in but I don’t think I can do that fairly and keep all the excellent points that the contributors made. I apologise therefore for this mammoth post but please stick with it as there are some great points made and some interesting news at the end.

Our first review came from Andy McIntosh himself via none other than Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis! Surely we’re the first Skeptics in the Pub group to get a review by that particular person. Imagine if we could get him over to talk!

You can read Andy’s review here, he seems to have enjoyed his opportunity of preaching to the largely unconverted and was happy that his combination of scientific and philosophical argument was listened to and may have planted seeds of faith.

Lets contrast that with this excellent review sent in by Mil:

“OK, before I start I should mention that I didn't stop for the second, Q&A part. I needed to catch a train - I don't live in Birmingham, because, given the choice, you don't live in Birmingham.

The thing about Professor McIntosh's talk - and I honestly don't say this to mock - is that it felt like watching someone go incrementally insane. Putting aside his opener about the feather (presumably included because he could not resist catching Richard Dawkins saying that he, Dawkins, had 'faith' in something), the first half of the lecture was informative and within striking distance of well-reasoned.  Whether one finds McIntosh's conclusions sound and persuasive or not, it did address the matter of the creationist invocation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a bar to evolution. The typical response to a creationist saying entropy must increase is to simply reply by finishing the sentence - 'in a closed (or isolated) system'. And that's generally the end of it: the creationist goes off to find another half of a sentence to use, and you can sit back and have a biscuit while you wait. Professor McIntosh explained why such a brisk dismissal of his position mischaracterised it. He, of course, is aware of what the law states and that the Earth isn't an isolated system; his argument rests, rather, on energy that's 'useable' by what he refers to as 'machines'. This is all fair enough as a clarification of a subtler argument, drawing on established scientific principles and so on.

That was the starting point. The finish was that Jesus is our Lord and the eye-witness accounts in the Bible prove it.

It really was like watching someone descend into delusion before your eyes. My internal response to the things he was saying followed this sort of path: "OK... Ahhh... Um... Eh...? What...? *What*...? WHAT...? ARGGGHHH!" At the beginning what he's saying at least appears plausibly worth addressing; in the middle he's, for example, telling us that atheists have no response to the arguments CS Lewis puts forward in 'Miracles' (so he's now reached what one might - generously - call 'shaky ground'); by the end it's the kind of stuff that wouldn't fly in a Year 10 classroom debate - I expected at any moment to hear the words 'Pascal's Wager', 'There are more of us than you', and 'Hitler'.

Professor McIntosh seems like a decent chap, he has genuinely-held beliefs, he's laudably keen to engage with those of differing views, and he's no doubt orders of magnitude a better mathematician than I am. Yet as the talk went on his reasoning simply fell to bits in breath-taking fashion. The room listened, and everyone really, really wanted to be polite, but towards the end there was a distinct rippling noise from the crowd - no one was actually interrupting, it was rather the sound of two hundred people all furiously trying to bite their tongues.

It was great to have a speaker who wasn't preaching to the choir, though. I'm very glad the Birmingham SitP invited Professor McIntosh, and I'm glad I went to listen. I have, however, not changed my position on the place of 'Intelligent Design' in school science lessons.”

It might come as a surprise to some but not all the skeptic regulars are atheists. One of our greatest supporters is the wonderful Abby who sent us this review from a Christian Skeptic perspective:

“As Christians neither me nor the friends who joined me on Weds, are literal creationists, and I have heard that nearly all mainstream Christians within the sciences refute creationism too (one even wrote of being cured of it) so I had my doubts as to how we’d find the evening, but that particular argument wasn’t really dwelled on during the evening. As I’m not highly qualified in science, here’s a more technical response from a couple of my friends who came along from church,  one’s a physics  teacher, and one’s a biologist, currently doing a PhD in immunology.

Both friends said that there was nothing contained within the evening that they hadn’t already thought about themselves. However, they said the science did seem to have a point:

The physics teacher says that indeed, "Thermodynamics says that entropy will always increase (everything tends to a state of maximum disorder) - which is seen in nature (physics at least).

The biologist tells me; in agreement with a sceptical counter-argument I heard following the talk, that entropy actually increases the amount of information. However, she said we have to ask ourselves what kind information there is in random noise, something structured / self-producing... It’s all very well it being 'information' but it’s got to be the right kind and that’s where the entropy argument comes in as it also refers to energy. To create the structures of life, you have to have energy.

However, both people, like myself, thought that the talk could have been presented in a much more clear and engaging way, making the relevance of what he was pointing out a little more self-evident (without needing a resident physicist and biologist on hand, guilty as charged). The biologist said “I was a little annoyed he didn't delve deeper. He was almost a little patronising constantly saying that he 'wouldn't go into that”. We all said we know this is difficult though, as by its very nature it’s specialist stuff, and he didn’t always have the time to expand.”

From our comments section Tituslivius gave us this succinct and pointed view of the night:

“I was expecting something a bit more heavyweight than this. I was mystified by one of the arguments presented (actually an ad-hominem attack) concerning Richard Dawkins' response to a question about the structure of a feather. We were only given half a sentence, without context, of what Dawkins was supposed to have said, and then invited to draw the inference that his entire stance was thereby compromised. Nothing was proved or even demonstrated by it. I would be interested to hear from people who stayed for the question session”

Also from the comments, Gurbie0 addressed some of the scientific and moral arguments presented by Professor McIntosh:

“His comment on how, according to an atheist view on the human mind (in that atheists don't believe in a separate 'soul' and our thoughts are just 'chemical reactions'), it would be possible to tell what someone was going to think using a large enough supercomputer was very interesting. I don't know enough about brain mapping or supercomputers to know whether this would be possible, but I can see how hypothetically it could be. However, even if it were possible I don't see what McIntosh's point was. He seemed to think that just because he found the idea disturbing that the idea was therefore flawed. He used a similar argument when talking about another aspect of the human mind, where he said that seeing humanity as 'chemical reactions' seemed 'miserable'. I'm sure some people do find the idea miserable, but that does not mean it's not true. Just because you don't like an idea does not decrease its validity.

He spoke about 'information', the point of which (as far as I understood it) was that a 'code' (such as that carried in DNA) could not exist unless a message existed prior to it. Then the message could be put into code, and then interpreted somewhere else. Of course if this were true then DNA could not have evolved or appeared naturally, as it would need a message provided by something else. McIntosh suggested that this initial message must have been provided by God. This idea can be debunked using a simple analogy: I, or a computer, could write down 20 entirely random letters, without any 'message' written into it or any code devised. This could then be given to someone, and that person could devise a random letter substitution system in order to 'decode' my sequence of letters (e.g. a=t, b=e, k=d). This, almost certainly, would just give a sequence of letters just as random as the original code. However, if the person did this 10 million times, devising a new decoding system every time, then one of those time would almost certainly result in a sentence with meaning, and 'information', even though the was no 'information' in the original code. That is how DNA could arise, with natural selection 'picking out' the meaningful sequences from the nonsense.

He seemed to think that atheism gave no explanation for 'morality' or altruism. Of course these things are easily explained by evolution, but since he had already decided the science proved evolution impossible he must not have considered this. He also assumed that atheists agreed with the idea that there is an absolute morality, which of course many do not, and many have very different ideas on the meaning of the term 'morality'.”

Our previous contributor Mil posted this response to Gurbie0’s comments:

“... your mention of McIntosh saying one could “tell what someone was going to think [in fact, be able to tell *everything*, not only thoughts, in advance] using a large enough supercomputer.” What he was doing there was simply giving a microprocessor face to ‘Laplace’s Demon’. The notion can be criticized on the basis of it being, mathematically, impossible for any such ‘all knowing predictive thing’ to exist. Which, IMHO, misses the point very badly – it’s like saying that ‘infinity’ is a false concept because you can’t build infinity as there’d be nowhere to put it. The other major criticism of it is that causal determinism is mugged by quantum randomness. Now, some argue that so called quantum randomness isn’t, or has not been demonstrated (and could never be demonstrated) to be truly random - Galen Strawson, for example. That, IMHO, again, misses the point too, though less badly. What’s at issue here is freewill, and introducing randomness doesn’t save freewill – chance is not choice. So, it doesn’t matter very much that you (and I) aren’t experts on brain mapping and supercomputers. You’re gleamingly correct: the real rubbing nub of the issue is McIntosh’s focus not on whether something is correct or not, but on whether it’s preferable. He might as well say, “Reality worries me, so I’m going to believe in something else instead.” Which – I’m sure you’re ahead of me here – could explain his position on quite a few other things too.”

Personally I wondered how somebody so sure about their ultimate answer (God) could look at any science totally objectively. It seemed to me that the science of the talk quickly gave way to his faith and that the latter was the stronger of the two. He obviously has a better grasp of physics than I do but to establish the kind of belief that he has you would have to discredit or ignore the consensus of scientists from multiple disciplines including geology, biology, astronomy and palaeontology to name but a few.

This topic is far from over and you don’t need to let me have this final word. You can continue to contribute to the discussion, we welcome any comments that you would like to make. For those of you that couldn’t make the event, or aren’t quite sure you did actually hear what you thought you heard, we’ve produced a DVD of the entire talk which should be available at our February meeting. It has a snazzy cover designed by Paul Bryant (@thebigyeti), photos by Simon Brettell (@simonbrettell) and video editing by Chris Richardson (@christheneck). You can watch the talk and the questions unedited, free to throw peanuts or shout at the screen from the comfort of your arm chair Let us know if you want a copy and we'll try to bring enough along. The cost will be £3 if you buy direct in person or with added cost for postage and packing if you live elsewhere. You can email us at skepticaldvds (at) gmail (dot) com or via our contact page.

We’re not uploading the talk because the speaker doesn’t want us to and because we don’t want to. We appreciate the work that our speakers put into their talks so if we do video them we’d rather not dilute their future impact by uploading, (although if it was a homeopath perhaps diluting would make it more effective). If you’re interested in buying one of the videos any profit made will, as always, be put back into Birmingham Skeptics in the Pub so that we can continue inviting great speakers and plan for even bigger and better future events.

Patrick (@paddyrex)