Taken by a charlatan

Danie Krügel, ex-detective, now master con-artist and pseudoscientist.

Last year I challenged Danie Krügel, the ex-detective of the missing children’s unit of the South African Police Service who claimed in 2006 he had invented a miracle machine that could find missing children, to accept the challenge of the James Randi Education Foundation to test his machine in a scientific environment according to the principles of the scientific method.

 Krügel likes the limelight, even if he makes a fool of himself. In 2006 he conned South Africa’s gullible media that his machine was effective in finding the missing children who disappeared after Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhoff abducted them. He appeared on M-Net’s Carte Blanche in a show that reminded me of the vaudeville shows of the 1920s, fooling a reputable director such as George Mazarakis and an equally reputable anchor-journalist Ruda Landman.

Then he went to the UK and haunted the parents of the missing toddler Madeleine McCann and even fooled the British media. There he claimed his machine showed the DNA of Madeleine’s remains on a beach in Portugal. (http://prometheusongebonde.wordpress.com/2008/07/27/the-detective-the-machine-the-missing-children-and-the-television-reporter/).

Randi has put up $1 million, supported by other amounts donated by the Australian Skeptics and the Indian Skeptics, to test pseudoscientific claims. Since Krügel’s phone call in which he accused me out of the blue of being a “grootbek” (big mouth), silence has reigned from Bloemfontein where he cons Free State pseudoscientists to believe in his miracle machine.

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic, the Hungarian born American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz emphasized.

Danie Krügel is living proof of the truth of Szasz’s words.

Remember the infamous Carte Blanche programme of 2006 giving South African journalism such a bad name, and Ruda Landman asking him “Is there anything metaphysical involved? Are you psychic?”

Krügel: “I’m a Christian and I put it clearly … this is science, science, science!“

Well, if that is science, then astrology also qualifies. And palm-reading, intelligent design, creationism, reiki and flying saucers.

Carl Sagan writes in that excellent expose of pseudoscience, The Demon-haunted world – Science as a candle in the dark: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.”

I sometimes wonder: do Ruda Landman and George Mazarakis ever acknowledge, even in their private thoughts, that they have been taken by a charlatan? And thousands of gullible people with them?

Step out of the closet with your atheism

Ricky Gervais and why atheists should not keep quiet. (My thanks to Thinus Dippenaar for sending me this)

Unbelievers, a euphemism for atheists, are coming out of the closet, Laurie Goodstein writes in The New York Times on 26 April.  

Goodstein points out that polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

“Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/us/27atheist.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all).

What is the situation in South Africa? I have been astonished at how many people have started coming out of the closet here too. When my book Geloof, Bygeloof en Ander Wensdenkery – Perspektiewe op Ontdekkings en Irrasionaliteite was published in 2007 by the brave Nicol Stassen of Protea Boekhuis, who would have expected an Afrikaans non-fiction book to go within 4 months into a 2nd printing?

The reaction of fellow atheists was overwhelming and still is. I have come across so many people telling me the book has liberated them from the fears they had previously harboured to make their atheism known.

A recent article in New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227076.000-hail-to-the-intellectual-president.html ) by Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific American – How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (Basic Books), points out how anti-intellectualism is a central thread of America’s culture and spirit. Mooney writes:

“In his Pulitzer prize-winning 1964 work Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, historian Richard Hofstadter showed how the anti-intellectual impulse arose from a complex set of historical factors which included religious evangelism, a bustling business culture and a deeply rooted emphasis on egalitarianism: “the American dream”. In short – and this is what is so insidious about it – distrust of the pointy-headed thinker springs, at least in part, from Americans’ better nature. The value placed on hard work and fairness plays as big a role as ignorance in the lamentable resilience of anti-intellectual sentiment, in Hofstadter’s view.”

 I still think we have a long way to go in South Africa, though. Factors preventing people from telling their friends and family they are unbelievers, are job security (yes, unfortunately that is true when it comes to promotion and employment stability), social alienation, and sometimes even plain hostility.

I recently received a letter from a woman with lots of insecurities who wanted to castigate me about my Kwakoskoop column on quackery in the three Afrikaans dailies Beeld, Volksblad and Die Burger. I write about health scams and how alternative medicine quacks mislead the public as if they are busy with science. But the woman opens her letter with the following words: “Dear Friend, I don’t know why you hate God and his children so much.”

Not that I have mentioned one word about religion, God, the Devil, or any belief system in my columns (yet).

That’s a typical reaction of people who sit in judgment on your atheism. Be prepared for it, but don’t let that put you off in coming out of the closet. It’s time to shout it from the rooftops. Why only leave it to Angus Buchan and his sheep to tell the world why they believe in myths.

At least we believe in things that can be rationally proven with evidence. That makes our case to tell it to others so much more valid.

Why is God hiding so effectively?

The book of scientist Victor Stenger showing why God is a myth and figment of human imagination.

“As someone who likes to think and discuss life and its questions, and who is drawn towards the Christian tradition, I have a great need for arguments challenging me, that make me ask qestions, that make me wonder. Every time I hope scientists can help me with this, but they disappoint me time and again. It is not only this book (John Brockman’s What is your dangerous idea?) but also websites such as Prometeus Ongebonde and Tart Remarks, not to speak of books such as The God Delusion and Letters (sic) to a Christian Nation. For example: how hard I even study these sites and works, I cannot even find one good argument against the existence of God. And I am looking for one, with a sore heart!”

Thus Gerrit Brand, book editor of Die Burger, on his blog http://gerritbrand.blogspot.com/.

“How hard I study these sites and works, but I cannot even find one good argument against the existence of God. And I am looking for one, with a sore heart!”

Well, Gerrit, maybe you should get hold of the book God – The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does not Exist by Victor Stenger, American physicist.

Brand’s point of departure is wong: it is not the scientists and atheists like me, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Savage, McBrolloks, Con-Tester, Objective, Renier, Hendrik, Oubaas and all the others commenting here, who have to bring the evidence for God. In our study of nature and the probabilities of God’s existence, the overwhelming deduction is that there is no such thing as a creator god. No evidence, no sighting of him/her, no provable and independent verification of the claims made about him by the three monotheistic religions.

No, Brand should rather bring the evidence that God does exist. It is an invalid escape route to ask scientists to bring the evidence for God. They do not claim he/she exists, but people like Brand does.

So why expect that from scientists? Logic, Gerrit, logic.

Philosopher Theodore Drange calls this the lack-of-evidence argument:

1. Probably, if God were to exist, then there would be good objective evidence for his existence. (We can find the smallest bacteria and virusses; why not the almighty creator of the universe?)

2. But there is no good objective evidence for his existence.

3. Therefore, probably God does not exist. Gerrit can perhaps tell us why theologians over centuries still cannot answer the question why God is hiding him/herself so effectively.

As Stenger writes: “After all, God is supposed to play a decisive role in every happening in the world. Surely we should see some sign of that in objective observations made by our eyes and ears, and especially by our most sensitive scientific instruments.”

You bring the evidence for your God, Gerrit, and all others thinking like you. It’s not the duty of science and scientists.

A bracelet with magical powers – or just a baloney bangle?

Bruce Fordyce, winning the Comrades Marathon without the Rayma balance bracelet

How do you know the health product claiming it can heal your ailments and maladies was tested scientifically and can be trusted? In this first of a series into the type of medical claims made by manufacturers to the public, Quackoscope investigates.

 

An advertisement regularly appearing in South African newspapers and other media and in which the product is praised to high heaven by Bruce Fordyce, nine times winner of the Comrades marathon, raises clear questions about how much longer misleading health claims should be allowed so easily. 

The advertiser of the Rayma balance bracelet claims the product gives guaranteed relief of arthritis, trigeminal neuralgia, high blood pressure, bad circulation, rheumatism, headache, migraine, gout, fibrositis, stiff shoulders, and back pain. It also makes the farfetched claim, without any scientific evidence, that it will improve your immune system, gives you better staying power, and is “recommended by leading doctors and sport stars from over the world.” Besides Fordyce, no other sport star is named and also no doctors. And as is common with this type of advertisement, there is no reference to clinical scientific studies confirming the claims, no double-blind tests, and no peer-reviewed scientific publication showing that the balance bracelet really can do what it is claiming. 

The new Consumer Protection Act states in section 41(1)(b) states advertisers may not “use exaggeration, innuendo or ambiguity” in the marketing of their products and services. With regard to the marketing of health products, the act may smother many claims made by quacks. 

Consumers are purported to be protected by two organisations with regard to health products and services: advertisements should adhere to the code of conduct of the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) (www.asasa.org.za). Then there is also the Medicines Control Council (MCC) that is supposed to ensure that medicines, before they are released on the market, undergo strict scientific protocols and processes about its safety. 

In the ASA code there is regular reference to the authority of the MCC and that advertisements must adhere to the requirements of the MCC about the safety of medicines and medicinal products. 

Section 8.20.1 of Appendix A of the code states: “Advertisements may not refer to any medicine, product, appliance or device in terms calculated to lead to its use for the treatment of any form of arthritis, or chronic or persistent rheumatism.”

In Appendix H dealing with advertising for over-the-counter-medicines – and should it not also be applicable to mail-orders such as the Rayma bracelet? -  the code states in section 24: “Advertising shall not include a recommendation by a person who, because of their celebrity, may encourage consumers to take a medicine.” 

Appendix F lists illnesses or conditions for which “advertisements should not make or offer products, treatments or advice unless recommendations accord with a full product registration by the Medicines Control Council.” It includes arthritis, rheumatism, backache, blood pressure, migraine and circulation, all conditions that the Rayma bracelet advertisements claim it can treat, alleviate or even cure.

In 2007 Prof. David Whitehead of the University of Cape Town laid a complaint at the ASA against Topline Innovations Mail Order in which he objected to the misleading marketing in the balance bracelet advertisements. The ASA found

that advertisements claiming that the bracelet can alleviate pain, must be stopped. The complaints of numerous scientists in the past about the absurd claims made in some health advertisements have been rejected by the ASA. Quackoscope will look at some of these cases in future columns and will also cast light on the obvious flaws in the ASA’s approach and its code. 

The most important complaint against the ASA is that its hearings do not take cognisance of proven medical and scientific evidence and that it accepts too readily alternative healers’ word without any scientific evidence to substantiate their claims.  The MCC also fails to apply the necessary requirements to prevent the entrance of specifically pseudoscientific health products on the market. 

At the end of February this year a group of scientists and health organisations accused the MCC of contravening the Constitution because of its failure to control so-called supplementary medicines and health products. 

According to an announcement in the Government Gazette in 2002 the MCC should have completed over a period of six months a survey of all supplementary medicines and products and its scientific validity. The survey period ended in August 2002 but since then manufacturers and marketers of these products have been continuing to “submit their information in terms of the expired call up. This information continues to be accepted by the Medicines Regulatory Affairs Cluster of the Department of Health. As a consequence the products are freely marketed without any regulatory oversight. This is an unfortunate and regrettable failure of the MCC’s statutory obligation to ensure that the availability of medicines and related substances are in the public interest,” the authors wrote. 

“The MCC has however failed to determine the correctness of the claims made for the myriad products which have been submitted in the last seven years. We would re-emphasise the argument that because no independent assessment of quality is being carried out on these products by the MCC, the products must be considered to constitute a public health hazard,” the group, led by Roy Jobson, professor of Pharmacology, Faculty of Pharmacy at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, continued. 

The signatories refer to the judgment of justice Dumisani Zondi in June 2008 in the case against the German vitamin quack Matthias Rath and others in which Zondi “clearly indicated that the primary purpose of the 2002 Complementary Medicines call up was to bring to the attention of the MCC the substances about which medicinal claims were being made, in order to determine the correctness of the claims, and whether the claims constitute a public health hazard.” 

They also referred to Zondi’s reference to advertising claims, and his indication that:

“. . . in view of the provisions of the 2002 call-up notice the . . . respondents must stop making claims about the medicinal effect of their products until their products in respect of which medicinal claims are made have been submitted to the MCC to review the efficacy, quality and safety of those claims.”

There is no doubt that the ASA and MCC fail to act against misleading health products and their advertisers and marketers. Yet the new Consumer Protection Bill will probably not change much. 

The US consumer watchdog Quackwatch (www.quackwatch.com) has investigated the efficiency of this type of balance bracelet. The Californian marketers of the Balance Bracelet (similar to the Rayma balance bracelet) were in 2004 prosecuted in court by the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) because of their claims that it was a pain-relieving product and because it made false and unsubstantiated claims about the change it can bring to the lives of consumers. 

According to the FTC the manufacturers contravened the FTC Act by claiming that the balance bracelet was a fast-acting, effective treatment for many types of pain. The FTC said that clinical scientific tests found that ionised bracelets such as the balance bracelet were no more effective to relieve muscle and wrist pain than placebo (non-ionised) bracelets. 

As with the Rayma balance bracelet its American counterpart claimed the pain was caused by “too much static electricity in that section of the body” because of “an imbalance between the positive and negative ions, the so-called ‘chi’ in the body”, as the Rayma advertisement states. 

The South African marketer, Mervyn Daitz of Durban, referred me to research allegedly by medical scientists of the University of Barcelona. No trace of this research could be found in any scientific data bank such as Eurekalert, PubMed or Medscape or from enquiries to the university itself. 

In 2002 the Mayo Clinic established in a study there was no difference in the pain of 710 participants who either wore a balance bracelet (claimed to be ionised) or an, by the looks of it, identical placebo bracelet. Three years ago a Chicago court ordered marketers of a similar balance bracelet as that advertised under the Rayma brand to pay consumers $87 million (more than R750 million) in damages. The court found, as Quackwatch and its scientific panel did, that the claims of the power of these bracelets were farfetched and misleading. 

The question now remains: how responsible are the media in continuing, despite these types of court and scientific judgments, to accept such advertisements?

The next hidden menace of the Mighty Men Cult?

David Koresh, leader of the Branch Dividian religious cult.

Angus Buchan, leader of the Mighty Men cult in South Africa

“If there was any doubt whether Angus Buchan and his mighty men were a cult, it was banished last weekend when he rose nearly like a Lazarus from the dead after his fainting.”

Is Jean Oosthuizen, journalist from Kerkbode, correct in his assessment in an article in the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport  that Buchan is a cult leader?

I want to ask the same question about Fred May of Shofar and his followers.  

I agree with Jean about Buchan (http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Weekliks/0,,752-2496_2509873,00.html ) and for the following reasons. Buchan and his Mighty Men followers, as well as the gullible students following pastor Fred May are all part of a cult if you evaluate their religious movements according to the following criteria as set out by the director of American Skeptics, Michael Shermer, in his excellent book Why People Believe Weird Things.

• Veneration of the leader. Glorification of the leader to the point of virtual sainthood or divinity. Look at the uncritical reaction to Oosthuizen’s article on Rapport’s website and see how Buchan is venerated and glorified. Similarly, read the comments of his followers on this blog, especially the one I wrote last year, Angus Buchan the New Messiah of the Gullible (http://prometheusongebonde.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=76). Talk to any student following Shofar and Fred May and the similarities just become more obvious.
• Inerrancy of the leader. Belief that the leader cannot be wrong in any way. Just read the comments on this blog and those reacting to Jean’s article.
• Omniscience of the leader. Acceptance of the leader’s beliefs and pronouncements on all subjects, from the philosophical to the trivial. Ditto.
• Persuasive techniques. Methods, from benign to coercive, used to recruit new followers and reinforce current beliefs.  Ditto.
• Hidden agendas. The true nature of the group’s beliefs and plans is obscured from or not fully disclosed to potential recruits or the general public. Don’t tell the attendees they will have to pay. Surprise them! And get the students to pay their tithes, even when it means Fred May can get his hands on part of the bursary money you get.
• Deceit. Recruits and followers are not told everything they should know about the leader and the group’s inner circle, and particularly disconcerting flaws or potentially embarrassing events or circumstances are covered up. What do we really know about the Angus Buchan “illness”? And why are Fred and Lucille May so rich?
• Financial and/or sexual exploitation. Recruits and followers are persuaded to invest money and other assets in the group, and the leader may develop sexual relations with one or more of the followers. At this stage Buchan and May have not shown this sexual exploitation characteristic but the financial exploitation has already begun and in May’s case has been an important part of his success. The sexual one? Well, Buchan is not exactly a young, charismatic man like David Koresh or other cult leaders but who knows…The Elmer Gantry factor may just kick in.
• Absolute truth. Belief that the leader and/or the group have discovered final knowledge on any number of subjects.  Buchan knows how to save South Africa… God has saved his potato crop … the list continues. And Fred May will save you from the evil evolutionists and scientists…
• Absolute morality. Belief that the leader and/or the group have developed a system of right and wrong thought and action applicable to members and non-members alike. Those who strictly follow the moral code become and remain members; those who do not are dismissed or punished. This speaks for itself and is widely applicable to Buchan and May.

Read the history of Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult who committed suicide to go and meet the Comet Hale-Bopp; or of Jim Jones and the gullible who died in the forests of Guyana. Or David Koresh of the Branch Dividian religious sect in Waco, Texas, Shoko Asahara, the half-blind leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult who threw sarin gas into Tokyo trains… the list goes on.

Research has shown that two-thirds of cult members come from normal functioning families and showed no psychological abnormalities when they joined the cult, the scientist M. Singer writes in his book Cults in Our Midst: The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives.

When people switch off their baloney detectors, who says Angus Buchan or Fred May isn’t the next hidden menace?

Angus Buchan and the ignorant masses

“Why does it matter if people cling to myths for solace? Because real-world problems such as climate change can only be solved by real-world thinking. Like it or not, the harsh reality is that nature doesn’t exist to serve humanity, and turning to myths that put humans at the centre of creation only distract us from appropriate actions.”

More than a year ago I quoted these words of Lawrence Krauss in his column “World Lines” in New Scientist when the Angus Buchan phenomenon first started rearing its head. Now the 70 000 Mighty (read uncritical, irrational) Men at Loftus Versfeld in 2008 have become more than 140 000 at this past weekend’s gathering on a farm near Greytown in KwaZulu-Natal. The potato faith-healer Angus Buchan thinks he and his gullible flock will be solving all the world’s – and especially South Africa’s – problems.

 Why does it indeed matter if more than 140 000 believers without baloney detectors want to listen to a modern-day “prophet” such as Buchan telling them how a mythical god can solve every worry they have?

But the prophet had another ace up his sleeve this time: he got ill and everybody started praying for him.

And behold!! – the next day he pitches up and he tells the uncritical masses Jesus has saved his life and has brought him back from the brink. And the newspapers report it as if that was true. (No word about how modern technology saved him, only the mythical god).

 What has gone wrong with South Africans to believe the baloney this man has been spreading all over the country? One would think that the average person pitching up to listen to Buchan has some common sense. From what these people are saying, many of them are well educated, mainstream and middle of the road citizens. But can you become a winning nation with people who believe myths and the mythical god they cling to so easily?  

I don’t think so. Last year I referred to own recent study that I have undertaken for Sceptic South Africa and in which a representative sample of South Africans were asked about their beliefs. It showed that we are a very gullible and ignorant lot. And that we have virtually no knowledge of the findings of science.

 

No wonder the gullible 140 000 – and their even more gullible wives and female partners – and millions thinking and believing along a similar vein, have made Buchan a new messiah. It shows there is something seriously wrong with our parenting, with our educational system, with the way we brainwash our children to believe in these myths. Emotion and a warm fuzzy feeling count, not rational thinking. Only one in nine South Africans really believe rational thinking counts, whereas more than 88% believe that God or an Intelligent Designer can work miracles in people’s lives.

 

Frightening, to say the least. Even more so because the Afrikaans media have gone to town in uncritically presenting Buchan’s words as if he was telling the truth. I thought news reporting was about reporting the facts. Why then this obsession with myths by the media? Again, Neels Jackson, the Media24 reporter, continues to present Buchan in a totally uncritical, no-questions-answered light.

 

One can only despair at the Angus Buchan phenomenon. It shows how vulnerable the ignorant are to shysters like Buchan who knows how to market and sell his god.

 

 

Galileo’s commandment and why pseudoscience should not be tolerated

God is a sound people make when they’re too tired to think anymore.

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

These apt descriptions by Edward Abbey, from Vox Clamantis In Deserto (A Voice Crying In The Wilderness), quoted from Steve Cichowski in a personal letter to Cliff Walker (February 21, 2002), are very much applicable to this weekend’s gathering of the “Mighty Men” – as they call themselves – praying once again at the feet of the potato farmer near Greytown.

Angus Buchan is the easy route to follow when you don’t want to think and when your grey matter is being asked to work. And judging by some of the reactions to Leon Rousseau and Gideon Joubert’s ranting and raving agains Karel de Pauw and me on Rapport’s website, so many Afrikaners are still infected by the god-meme.

That 200 000 South African men are willing to go without a bullshit detector and drive all the way to the highlands of KwaZulu-Natal to listen to Buchan, is frightening beyond words. It shows clearly that a sizeable percentage of men in the leading nation of Africa do not understand rational thinking and the findings of science.

To come back to Rousseau and Joubert in Rapport (http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Weekliks/0,,752-2496_2503451,00.html and http://jv.news24.com/Rapport/Weekliks/0,,752-2496_2503450,00.html respectively: they do not answer the scientific questions De Pauw and I have asked them (see our article in full in the previous thread of this blog), but rather, again, choose the route of emotional name-calling and denying the obvious.

Joubert writes: “Maar nêrens word bewyse gebring van enige ‘pseudo-wetenskaplikheid’ of ‘misplaaste wetenskaplike aansprake’ in my of Rousseau se boeke nie.” (“But nowhere they bring any evidence of any ‘pseudoscience’ or ‘misplaced scientific claims’ in my or Rousseau’s books.”)

Joubert has obviously not read our article thoroughly, or the previous thread on this blog. I have shown numerous examples of the pseudoscientific nature of Rousseau’s book elsewhere, but let me repeat them here. And then I’ll also point out how seriously Joubert’s book is infected by Intelligent Design cop-outs and pseudoscientific thinking.

Rousseau wrote to Die Burger’s art’s blog and also to Prometheus Unbound that it was untrue that he tried to provide evidence for the scientific truth of Intelligent Design or that he was furthering its cause. (“Dit is onwaar dat ek in Die groot avontuur die hipotese van IO (Intelligente Ontwerp) as wetenskaplik korrek probeer bewys of ’n pleidooi daarvoor lewer.”)

Secondly, Rousseau uses the absurd argument that Tobias recanted on the Avant propos in Rousseau’s book because I threatened his international reputation as a scientist in my review of his book in Die Burger in a similar way Galileo was forced to recant about heliocentrism. (Toe Claassen hom in sy resensie dreig met skade aan sy internasionale wetenskaplike reputasie omdat hy kwansuis die beweerde IO-elemente in my boek steun, moes hy ’n besluit neem. Op vergelykbare wyse is Galileo deur die Inkwisisie met foltering gedreig tensy hy sekere van sy astronomiese bevindings terugtrek. In albei gevalle was dit die groot en breë gees wat voor kleingeestigheid moes swig.)

Let’s first look at argument number one used by Rousseau, that his book is not a defence of Intelligent Design. He is misleading the readers. His book is filled with examples of Intelligent Design being propagated.

The first example is when he tries to explain the potential of young children to learn their own language and other languages at a very young age.

He then makes the following astonishing observation on page 145: “Atheists can please call me a phantasist, or slur me with being superstitious, but to me this sounds as if a very great, an incomprehensible great Intelligence must be responsible for this.”  (Äteïste kan my gerus maar ’n fantas noem, of my uitkryt vir bygelowig, maar vir my klink dit asof ’n baie groot, ’n onbegryplik grote Intelligensie hiervoor verantwoordelik moet wees.”)

He elaborates on this on the next page (p. 146): “What Intelligence had visualised 2.5 million years ago that humans would probably have to learn extra-terrestrial languages, learn extra-terrestrial sciences, and have a notion of extra-terrestrial norms and values that do not remind them of anything on their own planet? Was the evidence Tobias discovered, the gradual development of the ability of Homo habilis (the Handyman) to speak, perhaps part of a comprehensive long term plan? Briefly put: a masterplan?”

This obsession with a masterplan, an Intelligent Designer for things he cannot explain, is rife in Die Groot Avontuur. On page 69, with reference to the development of the mammal’s inner ear from the jaw of a reptile, he calls that an example of God’s sense of humor. (“God het ’n humorsin.”)

On page 237 he finally shows his cards in a chapter, “Is evolution in clash with faith?” He shows, typically and copied very adeptly from the arguments of the Discovery Institute, the bogus research body propagating Intelligent Design from Seattle, that he is a strong supporter of Intelligent Design. Just listen to the following sentence, after he quoted the religious scientist Cuvier who said God allows things to happen, even scientific discoveries. Rousseau then writes: “It is in fact arrogant of us, humans, to try to determine the grand plan of a Creator who holds the Universe in his hand.”

Readers can read chapters 46 tot 54 to see how openly Rousseau propagates Intelligent Design. He misinterprets scientific discoveries, uses secondary sources to “substantiate” his arguments, and calls everyone who disagrees with his Intelligent Design world view (Dawkins et al) “fundamentalists”.

But the absurdities of Rousseau’s arguments reach a dizzying new height when he compares me to Galileo. Thanks for the compliment, but Tobias did not recant because a science journalist from a Cape Town Afrikaans daily paper “threatened” him that his reputation was on the line.

Tobias recanted because he knew he had made a mistake to write such a glowing Avant propos when Rousseau was in fact an open Intelligent Design supporter and propagating that in his book. Tobias was honest enough.

Tobias was never threatened. In my review. I only asked the question whether Tobias was aware what could happen to his reputation for writing this Avant propos. To compare this to the Inquisition, is like comparing the size of the Indian Ocean with the fish pond in your garden.

Tobias wrote his own letter six weeks later, distancing him from the book’s Intelligent Design propagation. There was no need for him to do that.

My question again: why is the Afrikaner (read Gideon Joubert and Leon Rousseau and all those Angus Buchan “Mighty Men”) still clinging to their religious background when they have to explain things that happen to them? 

Let me look at Joubert’s denials that his book is pseudoscientific and that it supports the concept of Intelligent Design. In fact, any reader who just goes to chapters 23 to 25 of Die Groot Gedagte will find example upon example of pseudoscience. On page 284 he even takes on Stephen Hawking’s view that God does not exist and accuses him of grasping at straws (“na strooihalms gryp”).

His book is rife with pseudoscientific examples. Take this one: “God het die mens uit dieselfde fisiese atome geformeer waaruit die ganse heelal gemaak is …”

Or chapter 25, “Die Alfa en die Omega”, ending with the Latin expression, Omnia ad majorem Dei gloriam”

Please read only chapters 23 to 25: it shows you, as with the examples from Rousseau’s book above, how astonishingly both of them are lying when they deny the pseudoscientific character of their books. These lies they tell, unashamedly to the readers of Rapport, who lap it up and agree with them in their attacks on atheists who question people presenting pseudoscience in the cloak of science.

And still Rousseau keeps quiet about Tobias’s letter. Because it is absolutely devastating about his book.

Buchan, Rousseau, Joubert, the 200 000 Mighty Men, they all ignore Galileo’s commandment:”Science knows only one commandment: contribute to science.”

By opting for God when you cannot explain things, they do not contribute to science, rather make a mockery of it.

Militant atheists or just exposers of superstition?

By Karel de Pauw and George Claassen

 

(This is the full version of the article published in a much shortened version in Rapport on 12 April 2009) 

 

Leon Rousseau’s tirade on public platforms, also recently in  Kerkbode en two weeks ago in Rapport, the Afrikaans Sunday paper, in Hanlie Retief’s interview with him in which he regularly described  people who differ from him as “militant atheists”, “fanatics”, “lay preachers of atheism” and other words of abuse remind us a lot of the selective presentation of facts about witches and other “sinners” by the Jesuits during the Spanish Inquisition.

 

Let us immediately declare our interests: Rousseau’s reference to “militant atheists” in Retief’s interview, has appeared before elsewhere. Maybe Retief was more discreet by not mentioning our names, but Rousseau often publically declares, as in Kerkbode (the paper of the Dutch Reformed Church) and an article presented to an Afrikaans daily it did not want to publish as far back as 2007, that we are  “militant atheist”. We are not at all ashamed of being called atheists, but militant?

 

Evidence is the basis of scientific endeavour and research and when we emphasise this, unlike Rousseau, why call us “militant”?  Then he surely must call all scientists this. Let’s remember the apt description of evidence in science by Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

 

Rousseau prefers to hang labels around people’s necks and to make ad hominem attacks, but unfortunately his venom acts as a lightning conductor away from his book, Die Groot Avontuur (The Great Adventure, Human & Rousseau Publishers). We shall concentrate on the flaws in his book and on his lack of knowledge about evolution and will not resort to personal attacks as he is doing.  

 

Rousseau’s aggression started after De Pauw’s overwhelmingly positive review of Claassen’s bestseller book Geloof, Bygeloof en Ander Wensdenkery: Perspektiewe op Ontdekkings en Irrasionaliteite (Protea Boekhuis Publishers) appeared in 2007 in Die Burger (http://152.111.1.87/argief/berigte/dieburger/2007/10/15/SK/13/BBclaasen.html)  – whereas the reviewer also referred to the pseudoscientific nature of Die Groot Avontuur  and Gideon Joubert’s Die Groot Gedagte (Tafelberg Publishers).  This after Claassen exposed the pseudoscientific characteristics of Rousseau’s book in his own review in Die Burger. His and Joubert’s books are rife with pseudoscientific claims. That they were awarded Afrikaans book and church prizes tells one more about the ignorance of the judges – not one really trained in the scientific method and process – about what science really is than about the quality of the books.

 

Rousseau tells one and sundry about how scientists showed their approval of his book. Yet for some strange reason he keeps quiet about Prof. Phillip Tobias openly distancing him from Die Groot Avontuur.  

 

In his letter, published on 9 September 2006 in Die Burger (http://152.111.1.87/argief/berigte/dieburger/2006/09/09/SK/16/0809tobias.html) Tobias wrote, after Claassen asked in his review whether Tobias knew how his avant propos to the book was damaging his reputation as scientist because of the clear Intelligent Design support shown in Rousseau’s book:

 

“Now that I have read he final published version of Die Groot Avontuur , it has become clear to me that Rousseau supports the pseudoscientific concept of Intelligent Design … I want to use this opportunity to distance myself unequivocally from those parts of Die Groot Avontuur that supports ID (our italics).

 

Forget for a moment Claassen’s review and read the same criticism of Rousseau’s book in the review of it by the scientist  Andries Lategan in Beeld (16 October 2006). Lategan wrote that Tobias’s avant propos on the cover and in the book should rather have been a warning such as those on packets of cigarettes: “Reading this book is detrimental to a healthy understanding of what evolutionists say.”

 

Lategan, like us, Dr. Jurie van den Heever, palaeontologist of Stellenbosch University, Dr. Leon Retief and other scientists, remarked on the revelatory Intelligent Design cave Rousseau flees into in his book whenever he cannot understand something or explain it. “ An argument resting on something inexplicable can hardly be part of a discussion about the validity of scientific theories … Rousseau should perhaps give attention to the warning of Karen Armstrong in A History of God that people who want to link their concept of God to the shrinking areas of natural phenomena for which a thorough theory has not yet been developed, will always be on the run from scientific progress.”

 

Why then does he only single us out as “militant atheists” and not also Tobias, Van den Heever, Retief, Lategan and all the other critics of the pseudoscientific trash he has written?

 

Rousseau fires so vehemently with unscientific bravado at us and others as if we were the only people who did not see the light about his award-winning book, but his book is so filled with half-baked and unscientific ideas that he continues to repeat in other writings and on other platforms. Die Groot Avontuur is a good example of a layman who has not done his homework. Rousseau has admitted to Van den Heever he knew nothing about biology. If you admit you know nothing about a scientific field, it is unwise and unscientific to present an irrational philosophy such as Intelligent Design for something you can not explain rationally. If Rousseau cannot explain something, he opts for Intelligent Design as the solution. If he shows his lack of understanding about the way babies learn a language, he ascribes it to the “inexplicably great Intelligence” (p. 145). Then he surely has not read with attention Steven Pinker or neuroscientists working in this field.

 

He continues this clear misunderstanding of evolution in Jean Oosthuizen’s interview with him in Kerkbode. We shall mention only a few examples:

 

 He writes “As far back as in the 1920’s en 1930’s Darwin’s theory was revised to what is called neo-Darwinism.” To Rousseau  – and so many other misinterpreters of evolution – neo-Darwinism is a swear word. Darwin was not “revised”, but his ideas were supplemented by new knowledge about genetics. In fact, the work of among others J.B.S. Haldane, Ronald Fisher en Sewall Wright confirmed natural selection can and does indeed be the process of change as Darwin postulated; before these breakthroughs, the concept of natural selection had, because of various reasons, been dying a slow death for quite a while.

 

Then he cuts loose at Dawkins (a scientist he has read very superficially and whose most important books do not even appear in the source list of Die Groot Avontuur). 

 

What Dawkins did indeed do, was to popularise the ideas of inter alia William Hamilton, John Maynard Smith en George Williams about genetics and behaviour (not one appears in Rousseau’s corpus of reading matter), beginning with his book The Selfish Gene. And in all his other writings about Darwin and natural selection Dawkins says nothing else but what evolutionary scientists such as George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, George Ledyard Stebbins, Theodosius Dobzhansky, the patriarchs of the synthetic idea of evolution (according to the book of Julian Huxley, Evolution – The Modern Synthesis, published as far back as in 1942), have been saying for decades.  By the way, the term “neo-Darwinism” should only be really applied to the ideas of August Weissmann, quite a few years before the new synthesis.

 

Rousseau then continues: “Under the disciples or acolytes of Dawkins there are numerous militant atheists (in Afrikaans for example George Claassen and Karel de Pauw) who use or abuse science to attack religion.”

 

If he wants to call us militant, why does he not also name Julian Huxley, outspoken atheist who since 1927, with the publication of Religion Without Revelation, pleaded for an evolutionary, non-theistic world view?   Also Simpson, the reputable palaeontologist, in is book The Meaning of Evolution (1949)?  Or Jacques Monod, the French molecular biologist and Nobel-prize winner for physiology and medicine, with his notorious book, Change and Necessity (originally published in French in 1970 as Le Hasard et la Nécessité)?

 

“Dawkins insisted on gradual natural selection as the only explanation for evolution and everyone differing from him, was by implication rejected as stupids,” writes Rousseau. This is pure nonsense.

 

Dawkins frankly agrees – as many other scientists – that other factors besides natural selection can play important roles but the question is whether something else as the process can bring about the thorough transformation of organisms – and up to now the answer is no. Please read what enthusiasts of the so-called evo-devo discipline, for example Sean B. Carroll in his book The Making of the Fittest say about it. They do not deny the important role of natural selection, even if Rousseau thinks so or tries to persuade us that they do.

 

Rousseau also refers to Dawkins’s The Ancestor’s Tale “in which he talks about hox genes (master genes which can cause very quick evolutionary changes) and Motoo Kimura’s neutral theory as if he (Dawkins) has never said anything else but that.”

 

Dawkins has been writing books since 1976 beginning with The Selfish Gene, and now it is being held against him that he has taken notice of new developments such as hox genes and evo-devo.

 

“It is a very thick book – 506 fine printed pages – and I haven’t yet read every word. But up to this stage nowhere can I see an admission by Dawkins that his vehement insistence on natural selection was wrong.” Here again Rousseau shows his selective knowledge. His reading is incomplete and not thorough. Even Kimura admitted before he died that natural selection must be the leading factor for transformations above the molecular level.

 

Die American physicist Lawrence Krauss recently referred in his fortnightly column “World lines” in New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826592.400-commentary-its-a-wonderful-cosmos.html) to the iniquity of the work of C.S. Lewis who supported the popular viewpoint “that science, by explaining the inner workings of the universe, robs it of the wonder that religion provides – a viewpoint that, frankly, I find offensive.”

 

A last thought: the American geneticist Jerry Coyne, author of the bestseller Why Evolution is True, summarises the  Rousseau and Intelligent Design philosophy perfectly: “… the real war is between rationality and superstition. Science is just one form of rationality, whereas religion is the most common form of superstition. … If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by calling our ignorance ‘God.’

 

Unfortunately scientists have for far too long kept quiet about pseudoscientific works such as those of Rousseau and Joubert. For Rousseau to convert the indefensible parts of his work as a mask for Intelligent Design into labelling his critics as “militant atheists”, reminds us somewhat of Alfred Hitchcock who, looking out the window of his car saw a young boy standing next to the road with a priest’s hand on his shoulder, shouted “Run, Sonny? Run for your life!”

 

People, who confuse Rousseau’s book with science, should also run for their lives.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oor evolusie en die Oerknal

Twee teorieë, die een 150 jaar oud vanjaar, die ander een net meer as 80.

Die eerste een het sulke ernstige gevolge ingehou vir die wyse waarop mense voortaan hul oorsprong, herkoms en uiteinde sou betrag dat die vrou van ’n Anglikaanse biskop kort ná die bekendstelling van die teorie, deeglik bewus van die implikasies daarvan, teenoor haar man uitgeroep het, “O my skat, laat ons hoop wat mnr. Darwin sê nie die waarheid is nie. Maar as dit waar is, kom ons hoop dit word nie algemeen bekend nie.”

Die tweede een het byna veertig jaar soos ’n stadig pruttende bredie die smaaktepels van wetenskaplikes getoets en is aanvanklik met verontwaardiging uitgespoeg deur niemand minder nie as wetenskap se eerste superster, Albert Einstein. Eers het hy die Russiese wiskundige Alexander Friedmann se model van ’n uitbreidende en ontwikkelende heelal, die eerste keer in 1922 in die Zeitschrift für Physik gepubliseer, verwerp.

Einstein het 17 jaar vroeër sy spesiale relatiwiteitsteorie uiteengesit en in 1915 sy algemene relatiwiteitsteorie. Hy was byna onaantasbaar en is op die hande gedra. In 1917 het hy sy teorie van ’n kosmologies konstante heelal gepubliseer, dié keer met minder sukses.

Toe die Belgiese priester-wiskundige Georges Lemaître in 1927 in ’n onbekende Belgiese vaktydskrif Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles sy teorie van ’n soort oerontploffende atoom, duidelik die voorloper van Arno Penzias en Robert Wilson se oerknalteorie van 1964, publiseer, het dit ook nie Einstein se guns gewen nie. By ’n internasionale konferensie van die wêreld se top fisici, het hy sy teorie aan Einstein verduidelik. “Jou berekenings is korrek, maar jou fisika is afskuwelik,” was Einstein se kommentaar.

Friedmann en Lemaître het, soos dikwels tevore in die ontdekking van nuwe natuurwette en -verskynsels  – dink maar aan Copernicus, Galileo en Alfred Wegener – te ver voor hul tyd beweeg. Astronome het Einstein in 1917 meegedeel die heelal was staties en hy het dit so aanvaar deur ook sy “fudge”-faktor, lambda, wat ’n statiese heelal beskryf het, te formuleer. In 1929 het Edwin Hubble bevind die heelal is besig om uit te brei en Einstein het sy “fudge”-faktor as “my greatest blunder” beskryf.

Die Russiese Nobelpryswenner vir fisika Lev Landau het tydens die ontvangs van sy prys in 1962 met die uitgelese gehoor in Stockholm die draak gesteek dat kosmoloë dikwels verkeerd is, maar nooit twyfel nie. Die Britse fisikus Simon Singh beskryf dié ewige en gesonde spanning tussen sekerheid en twyfel in sy boek Big Bang – The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know About it: “Dit was hierdie afwesigheid van bewyse wat toegelaat het dat die wetenskaplike samelewing deur vooroordeel oorreed is om Einstein se ewige, statiese model te aanvaar bo Friedmann en Lemaître se uitbreidende Oerknal-model. In wese was kosmoloë steeds in daardie ongemaklike niemandsland tussen mite en wetenskap. As hulle vooruitgang sou wou maak, moes hulle konkrete bewyse vind.”

Eers twee dekades later het die Amerikaanse fisici George Gamow en later sy medewerkers Robert Herman en Ralph Alpher bevind Friedmann en Lemaître was nader aan reg as Einstein, maar eers in 1964 het Penzias en Wilson die onomstootlike bewyse gevind: die kosmiese uitstralingsgeruis van die Oerknal wat hulle by Bell Laboratories in New York waargeneem het, het die belangrikste wetenskaplike teorie sedert Darwin se evolusieteorie bevestig.

Dit is juis dié intellektuele toutrekkery tussen wéét en net wonder of wens wat die kragtigste kenmerk van wetenskaplikes se soeke na die waarheid is en wat soos ’n kronkelende rivier in ’n reënwoud deur Adam Hart-Davis en Paul Bader se The Cosmos – A Beginner’s Guide en A Search for Origins – Science, History and South Africa’s ‘Cradle of Humankind’ , onder redakteurskap van Philip Bonner, Amanda Esterhuysen en Trefor Jenkins, vloei.

Beide boeke val binne die vereiste wat die Amerikaanse fisikus Robert Park stel vir ’n ingeligte samelewing: “Dit is nie soseer kennis van wetenskap wat die publiek benodig nie, maar ’n wetenskaplike wêreldvisie – ’n begrip dat ons in ’n geordende heelal leef, onderworpe aan fisiese wette wat nie gesystap kan word nie, ” skryf hy in Voodoo Science – The Road From Foolishness to Fraud.

Enige mens wat op ’n helder aand na die sterre en planete kyk,  is nie net besig met fisiese waarneming nie, maar raak onvermydelik betrokke by filosofiese denkprosesse oor waar alles dan begin het en waar dit eendag, miskien more of eers miljarde jare van nou af, gaan eindig.

The Cosmos – A Beginner’s Guide werp perspektief op die ontstaan van die heelal en hoe die mens se kennis hieroor veral die afgelope millennium verbreed het danksy die werk van fisici en astronome – van Copernicus se heliosentriese teorie wat die einde beteken het van mense se siening dat hulle die middelpunt van die heelal is, tot Galileo se botsing met die pouslike gesag en die geleidelike en stelselmatige aftakeling van geestelike leiers se almag op oerverklarings van ons herkoms.

Hierna sou die mens se begrip en denke van die ontstaan van die heelal nuwe kosmiese weë volg en die eeuelange verklarings van ’n sesdag skepping en ’n aarde so jonk as 10 000 jaar eenkant gelaat word deur diegene wat glo in bewyse en nie in wensdenkery nie.

Is ons alleen? vra Hart-Davis en Bader in hul slothoofstuk en bespiegel oor teorieë hoe lewe op Aarde kon ontstaan het, van die filosofiese en moeilik beantwoorde vraag “Wat is lewe?” tot die ontdekking van vorme van lewe in die diepste oseane in vuurwarm hidrotermiese uitlaatkanale op die donkerste seebodem. Hulle besigtig ook die panspermiese teorie van Fred Hoyle en Chandra Wickramasinghe, eers deur wetenskaplikes as vergesog bestempel, maar deesdae al hoe meer hoofstroomwetenskap, dat die boublokke van biologiese lewe vanuit  die buitenste ruimte via komete en meteoriete die Aarde se atmosfeer kon binnegedra het.

Hier waar lewe sy ontstaan het, is die beginpunt van Bonner en sy mederedakteurs se blik op die herkoms van die ryk fossielskatte wat Suider-Afrika as die wieg van die mensdom laat bekend word het. A Search for Origins plaas een van Suid-Afrika se grootste wetenskaplike prestasies, die ryk fossiel-ontdekkings by Sterkfontein, Swartkrans, Kromdraai en ander opgrawings direk noord van Krugersdorp, binne die breër verband van Darwin se evolusieteorie.

Vir plaaslike kreasioniste en aanhangers van die teorie van Intelligente Ontwerp is die verklaring van dié gebied as ’n Wêrelderfenisgebied ’n steen des aanstoots. Vergelyk maar die gebelgde uitroep van die aartskreasionis Pieter Pelser in sy onlangse boek Die Evolusie Illusie oor dié ryke fossielskat wat Darwin se gevaarlike idee op die Witwatersrand bevestig: “Die Maropeng/Sterkfontein sage berus op verregaande en onwetenskaplike spekulasie om ’n bankrot geloof te ‘bewys’. En dít is die evolusie-geloof.”

Bonner en sy medewerkers, wat buiten die drie redakteurs ander toonaangewende wetenskaplikes en historici soos Phillip Tobias, Himla Soodyall, Marion Bamford, Jane Carruthers, Saul Dubow, Simon Hall, Kevin Kuykendall, Goran Štrkalj, Lyn Wadley, Thomas Huffman en David Pearce insluit, maak deeglik korte mette van Pelser se verklaring dat die Maropeng-fossielneerslag waar meer as 600 fossielvoorbeelde al ontdek is, aan Noag se vloed toegeskryf moet word.

Bonner en Kie. en ook Hart-Davis en Bader vermag in hul boeke die feitlik onmoontlike, om natuurwetenskap en die filosofiese vrae wat natuurwetenskaplike ontdekkings tot gevolg het – wie is ons, waarvandaan kom ons, waarheen is ons op pad? – op ’n manier te versoen. Die Amerikaanse filosoof Daniel Dennett skryf in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea – Evolution and the Meanings of Life  “daar is nie iets soos filosofie-vrye wetenskap nie; daar is net wetenskap wie se filosofiese bagasie aan boord geneem word sonder ondersoek.”

Evolusie en die Oerknal, twee natuurwetenskaplike teorieë wat vandag sterker as ooit staan, nou verder onderskryf deur Bonner en Kie. en Hart-Davis en Bader, word ongelukkig steeds verdag gemaak deur nie-wetenskaplik ingestelde kritici wat Galileo se waarskuwing in 1623 in sy boek Die Ontleder verontagsaam:

“Filosofie is geskryf in hierdie groot boek, die heelal, wat deurlopend deur ons waarneming ontbloot word. Maar die boek kan nie begryp word tensy ’n mens eers leer om die taal te verstaan waarin dit saamgestel is en die letters waarin dit geskryf is te lees nie. Dit is geskryf in die taal van wiskunde, en die letters is driehoeke, sirkels en ander geometriese vorms waarsonder dit menslik onmoontlik is om ’n enkele woord daarvan te verstaan; sonder dié wandel jy in ’n donker doolhof.”

·        The Cosmos – A Beginner’s Guide, Adam Hart-Davis en Paul Bader  (BBC Books, 2007, R240, ISBN 878- 1-846-07212-3); A Search for Origins – Science, History and South Africa’s ‘Cradle of Humankind’ , reds. Philip Bonner, Amanda Esterhuysen en Trefor Jenkins (Wits University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-1-86814-418-1).

The persecution of atheists by the religious

Daniel Dennett, now visiting South Africa

“I only recently discovered that there are other people who think like I do. It is very cold and lonely here in Potchefstroom” (the haven of conservative Doppers – Reformed Churched Calvinists). “On 14 March I wrote a Monduitspoel column for the three Afrikaans dailies Beeld, Die Burger and Volksblad’s Saturday supplement By. (’The  gap between what we know and what we believe’). Very short but with lots of Trouble! I never imagined Christians were so terribly above rational thinking. The ‘attacks’ on me as person was overwhelming. How do you handle this?” De la Rey Marais, a former professor at Northwest University in Potchefstroom, asked in an email to me elsewhere on this blog. I translated the above for other readers not proficient in Afrikaans.

 

Welcome to the persecution by religious people, De la Rey. I regularly receive letters from people who call themselves Christians who call me the worst names. They follow all sorts of tactics. When my book Geloof, Bygeloof en Ander Wensdenkery: Perspektiewe op Ontdekkings en Irrasionaliteite started making waves in 2007, I was informed that it was hidden behind a stack of other books at the Exclusive Books branch in Tyger Valley in Durbanville so that the public could not see it. When I made enquiries, I was told by one of the staff members that un-Christian books like this should not be sold in his shop!

Well, the book went into a 2nd printing within 4 months, not bad for Afrikaans non-fiction.

This is just an example of the strategy regularly followed by religious repressors. Rather than facing the truth of the discoveries made by science, they try to suppress it.

“If religion isn’t the greatest threat to rationality and scientific progress, what is?” asked Daniel Dennett, who are visiting South Africa at the moment, in a recent article in The Guardian.

Dennett, director for the Centre of Cognitive Studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts and author of books such as Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natura Phenomenon, emphasises that perhaps television or addictive video games are more dangerous to science than religion. “But although each of these scourges – mixed blessings, in fact – has the power to overwhelm our best judgement and cloud our critical faculties, religion doesn’t just disable, it honours the disability.

“People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge and to make the major decisions of their lives by consulting voices in their heads that they call forth by rituals designed to intoxicate them,” writes Dennett.

Religion is nothing less than intoxication with irrationality, I wrote in a previous article. As Dennett points out, “You don’t have to be religious to be crazy, but it helps. Indeed, if you are religious, you don’t have to be crazy in the medically certifiable sense to do massively crazy things. And – this is the worst of it – religious faith can give people a sort of hyperbolic confidence, an utter unconcern about whether they might be making a mistake, that enables acts of inhumanity that would otherwise be unthinkable.”

Dennett writes that although other institutions or traditions (sports or art) may encourage a certain amount of irrationality, “only religion demands its as a sacred duty.”

This is further expanded by the British physicist William Bowen Bonner’s explanation of the scientific method in The Mystery of the Expanding Universe:  

“It is the business of science to offer rational explanations for all the events in the real world, and any scientist who calls on God to explain something is falling down on his job. This applies as much to the start of the expansion as to any other event. If the explanation is not forthcoming at once, the scientist must suspend judgment: but if he is worth his salt he will always maintain that a rational explanation will eventually be found. This is the one piece of dogmatism that a scientist can allow himself – and without it science would be in danger of giving way to superstition every time that a problem defied solution for a few years.” 

Stand tall. It is time that atheists and rational thinkers stop hiding in their corners. Not even one religion has any validity and credibility left in the face of scientific findings. We should tell that to the world, loudly and clearly. This is the age of Darwin, Einstein and rational thinking based on evidence. Not the age of superstition and believing in ghosts and gods living faraway in their heavenly clouds.