Marriage Equality 2015 - Dissecting the arguments - Part 1: Logic

The Marriage Equality referendum looms large this year and already those on the opposing side are beginning to trot out the same batch of logical fallacies and worn-out cliched arguments to justify denying people equal treatment under the law. As a result I've decided to distill some of the posts I've made on Boards over the years into a summary of the main arguments against marriage equality and why they don't stand up to even the shallowest scrutiny. I've divided this into several parts so anyone reading this doesn't get bogged down in a tidal wave of information. This part deals with the stock arguments being put forward against marriage equality and their logical flaws. The upcoming parts will deal with why the bible doesn't support the anti-equality side in the way they think it does; the arguments about children and marriage and the research which supports same-sex parenting and finally, a dissection of the research used by the anti-equality side to argue against same-sex parenting.

The first thing that should be pointed out is that the stock arguments now being put forward by anti-equality campaigners are not new. Take these for example:

1. The religious argument

"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

OK, let's start off with an easy one. This argument, despite what you might think is still quite popular in this referendum. Take this for example:

A Yes vote in the referendum will undermine the principle of equality

It should be obvious to everyone that this argument is a non-starter. Quite apart from the fact that the bible doesn't support the NO position (Something which I'll cover in more depth in a future post), but the constitution, the thing that these people are ostensibly trying to protect forbids adopting such a position:

44.2.2 The State guarantees not to endow any religion.

44.3 The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status.

Finally, I'll let the great orator of modern times Barack Obama explain why this argument fails:

2. The unnatural argument

"The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results. The purity of the public morals, the moral and physical development of both races, and the highest advancement of civilization . . . all require that [the races] should be kept distinctly separate, and that connections and alliances so unnatural should be prohibited by positive law and subject to no evasion."

Again, this argument pops up quite a lot, usually voiced in the USA as the "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" argument. However, you do find the argument here too, like this from a month ago:

Head to head: Why we should vote against the same-sex marriage referendum

In this article Bruce Arnold argues:

"All living organisms on the surface of the world, and beneath and above that surface, are motivated by simple and basic instincts, the two most important of which are survival and procreation. These cannot easily be separated. From the tiniest embodiment of life on this planet to the large and complicated nature of animals and birds, and of men and women, survival goes hand-in-hand with the desire, need or instinct to procreate. All life depends on this primal expression of life’s purpose. A great part of the actual meaning of my life, and the marriage that is an embodiment of what I am and have been for the greater part of this past century, is vested in this simple but unique truth."

Apart from all the other things that Arnold gets wrong in his article, this is one of the most glaring problems. Firstly, marriage, being a social construct, is by definition unnatural. Secondly, even our instinct for monogamy is questionable. Human sexual behaviour is essentially a compromise between the unrestrained desires of the male for as many mates as possible and the unrestrained desires of the female for a perfect single mate who is reliable and genetically superior. As a consequence, when we look at societies historically and geographically, what we see is this:

The above graph taken from this article shows that just 19% of human societies. The author goes on to state, however that within polygynous societies that monogamy is quite common. As much as this is generally true, it is quite badly worded. As other authors such as Matt Ridley have shown, it was quite common within polygynous societies for a male to have a favourite or preferred wife who would have had a degree of higher status afforded to her, but this is quite different from a monogamous relationship as we understand it today.

The big problem here though is that arguing against something on the basis of whether or not it is natural is just straight up wrong. This argument is what is termed an appeal to nature and is explained here.

3. The "breakdown of society" argument

"Civilized society has the power of self-preservation, and, marriage being the foundation of such society, most of the states in which the Negro forms an element of any note have enacted laws inhibiting intermarriage between the white and black races."

Again we have another argument which is pretty straightforwardly wrong. And here's Pope Francis spouting it in January:

Pope Francis: Gay marriage will 'destroy the family,' 'disfigure God's plan'

This is an example of another logical fallacy, the appeal to consequences of a belief. Really, this is just a more refined scaremongering tactic. Rather than tackle the issue of marriage equality on its own merits, proponents of this argument try to scare the audience by associating it with negative consequences.

4. The "slippery slope" argument

"[If interracial couples have a right to marry], all our marriage acts forbidding intermarriage between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity are void."

Ah, the slippery slope argument. This argument is simultaneously the most common and heinous argument in the current debate. Here is Breda O'Brien giving voice to it:

‘Should we allow mothers to marry their daughters?’

Apart from being side-splittingly laughable it is also a fallacious argument, namely the slippery slope fallacy. At no point does Breda or anyone else on the NO side demonstrate a series of sound logical reasons why the acceptance of marriage equality MUST lead to the removal of all marriage laws.

5. The "what about the children" argument

"It is contended that interracial marriage has adverse effects not only upon the parties thereto but upon their progeny . . . and that the progeny of a marriage between a Negro and a Caucasian suffer not only the stigma of such inferiority but the fear of rejection by members of both races."

At the time of writing this, the Children and Family Relationships Bill is about to render this argument entirely moot (Well, let's hope so). However, for the longest time, the issue of gay parenting has been inextricably and incorrectly linked with marriage equality. I will deal with the gay parenting aspect of this particular argument in a future post but for now it suffices to show that this too, in the words of Douglas Adams, is a load of dingo's kidneys.

This like the immediately previous one, is an attempt at scaremongering, specifically an appeal to fear.

Despite the argument being fundamentally flawed, it is nonetheless powerful, which is why it gets used a lot, even for comic effect:

6. The "traditional marriage" argument

"Allowing interracial marriages “necessarily involves the degradation” of conventional marriage, an institution that “deserves admiration rather than execration."

Again, quite a common argument, so common in fact that we've already seen it above in the article on Pope Francis. The "traditional marriage" argument as point no. 3 above demonstrates is doubly wrong. Not only because of the scaremongering surrounding negative consequences but also because it is an appeal to tradition. The argument fails not only because it makes an automatic assumption that the way things were done was better but also because it assumes that there aren't more important considerations. Except that there are and this is the heart of the debate. Equality matters. Equality is a principle enshrined in our constitution and others worldwide:

40.1 All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law.


NOTE: All of the quotes in red above come from the two landmark anti-miscegenation court cases, Loving v. Virginia and Perez v. Sharp. It never ceases to amaze me how the same arguments are cropping up now 50 years after they were shown to be wrong.

Addendum: Since I originally started debating against the stock arguments against marriage equality, a new argument seems to have evolved so I thought that I would deal with it briefly. This argument is what I am calling the linguistic argument. It goes like this: "Legalising gay marriage would be bad because it would mean redefining marriage." It has puzzled me for quite a while that anyone would think this was a good argument. For a start, nobody proposing this argument has explained why redefining marriage would be a bad thing only stating that it would. They seem to think that we would suddenly lose all means to communicate because we wouldn't know what marriage meant. 
Having studied the argument though, it ends up simply being a prescriptivist argument. Here is Tom Scott explaining why these arguments don't hold up:

That's about it for the logic of the arguments on the NO side of the debate. In the next part I will detail why the Bible doesn't support the NO side in the way most people think it does.

Blowing the dust off

This is just a quick note to say that the dust is being blown off this blog at long last. Hurrah! I can't believe that it's been three years almost since this thing's been updated but the marriage equality referendum is looming large on the horizon and this is an issue which is important enough that I am getting back into the swing of things as part of my miniscule contribution to the overall debate. Plus it gives me a chance to distill, expand and clarify some of the things that I've been posting on Boards for the last few years.

Dilithium, Naqadah and our chemical future

Science fiction has evolved since the days of Jules Verne and HG Wells and now there are many different genres and sub-genres of sci-fi. One of the basic tenets of hard sci-fi genres has been the imagination of technology which does not yet exist. In more popular sci-fi franchises such as Star Trek and Stargate this feature has been manifest through the creation of fictional materials and chemical elements. This has been seen most recently in the Star Trek reboot where "red matter" is a key plot device. For the moment I'm going to forget that red matter is actually a bad rip-off of an idea from Alias (another JJ Abrams crapfest). The important thing here is that these fictional materials and elements are quite literally the building blocks of science fiction. 

Quite often the more advanced technology described in sci-fi is based on some fictional material. The hyperdrive engines and cloaking devices in Stargate for example, rely on naqadah as a fuel source. Similarly the basic strucutre of the ringworlds in Larry Niven's titular novel are made from a material called scrith which is described as having a tensile strength similar to the force bonding atomic nuclei.

Imagining advanced technology is a wonderful thought exercise and the lifeblood of science fiction and for the moment there is thankfully, enough of the universe which we do not understand to allow these technologies to seem plausible. The same cannot be said for chemical elements though.

When I was first introduced to the periodic table by an illustrated dictionary of science book that my parents bought me when I was 8, there were 103 known chemical elements. Now there are 112 named elements and another 6 elements with temporary symbols. So the burning question is whether any of the currently discovered elements are likely to power hyperdrive elements or facilitate time travel. The answer it seems is probably not. 

The oldest of the newly discovered elements is Rutherfordium. It has an atomic number of 112 and a melting point of 2100C. More importantly though, it is a synthetic radioactive element with a half-life of 1.3 hours. It's the same story with the other element too. All of these new super-heavy elements up to ununoctium have been generated in nuclear and particle accelerator experiments and are radioactive and unstable. So far there's nothing with an unprecedented tensile strength or the ability to contact the dead. As with everything in science though, there's no predicting the future, unless you've got a premium rate phone line. It is possible that in future some element like maclarium from Stargate with an atomic number in excess of 200 may exist with magical properties. 

The only problem with creating new elements is that the newest elements we have managed to synthesise have been created in particle acceleration experiments. The Large Hadron Collider constructed beneath the CERN facility in Geneva is one of the most impressive scientific undertakings in history but at a cost of €7.5bn it is also the most expensive. If we do manage to create some element in fifty years time with an atomic number of 150 and a tensile strength in teranewtons, it's going to be so expensive that to make a nail out of it will probably make gold or platinum seem free by comparison.

I hope Scott Adams is right.

In his book "The Dilbert Future", Scott Adams attempts to predict the future of technology and office relations. Some of his predictions are downright creepy such as the prediction that large companies such as telephone companies would form confusopolies to intentionally confuse customers rather than compete on price. It's true, just try picking through the range of price plans from O2. Other predictions though are, for the moment, just for entertainment value. My favourite chapter is, naturally, "Life will not be like Star Trek". Of course Adams is right. If the future really were like Star Trek then "nobody would be able to convince me that I should be anywhere other than on the holodeck getting a hot oil massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister". 

Having sat through Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for the second time in a week, I can't help but think that life in the future will not be like Star Wars either. It's not for the obvious reason of living with some "hokey" religion but rather the unbelieveable way in which techonology seems to have evolved in the Star Wars universe.

I have to give credit where it's due and fair play to George Lucas, the opening battle scene in Revenge of the Sith is incredibly impressive but it demonstrates an unrealistic projection of our current technological state. Lucas' vision of the future is one which seems to be influenced by one too many bad WWII movies. He's not alone in this, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers suffers the same problem, although Heinlein at least has the excuse that Starship Troopers was written in 1959.

The reason why neither of these two visions will come to pass stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution in general and technological evolution in particular. In Revenge of the Sith Lucas depicts massive battle fleets of reasonably equally matched cruisers. Lucas seems to think that advances in technology will suddenly stop at some point in the future and worlds will just start building more and more of everything. The six movies span almost forty years and yet the Death Star is the only major technological or strategic development in that time. You only have to look at the evolution of military technology during a similar war-ridden period on Earth to see why Lucas got it so wrong. 

At the end of WWII, the North American P-51 Mustang was the pinnacle of battlefield technology. It had a top speed of 703km/hr and a range of 2.755 km. Forty years later, the B1-B Lancer was in service with a top speed of 1340km/hr and a range of 11,998 km. It's the same story with tanks, compare the M4 Sherman with the M1 Abrams. 

It's not just the technology that has evolved in the last 65 years since WWII, it's also the way we fight. The development of the cruise missile, stealth aircraft, the airborne laser, the Aegis weapons system, UAVs and UCAVs have all served to change the face of modern combat. To really see the difference watch a WWII movie, anyone will do and then read "The Bear and the Dragon" by Tom Clancy or play Modern Warfare. The difference is amazing. Nowadays we fight smart, not hard and research programmes such as the Future Force Warrior programme shows that this trend is in no danger of stopping. We have moved from trench warfare to small unit tactics and now we're beginning to see the early stages of one man armies. If you want a reasonable prediction of the future of modern combat, don't watch Star Wars, watch Universal Soldier instead.

As I've already said, this prognostication predicament is suffered by Robert Heinlein as well, although in the case of Starship Troopers it's excusable. Released in 1959, Starship Troopers imagines a massive future war between humanity and an arachnoid species referred to only as "The Bugs". Told through the eyes of Juan "Johnnie" Rico, the story is practically a war novel with the veneer of science fiction. There are imaginations of futuristic technology such as power armour but the tactics are no different to those found in the Korean War. It has to be said that technology prediction was not Heinlein's strong suit. In one of his other novels, Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein envisions a wonderfully detailed vision of a future earth with just one minor drawback, the most advanced communications technology of the time is essentially a telex machine. 

Predicting the future, at least in a science-fiction context, is possible, just read any of Arthur C. Clarke's novels or better yet the revised edition of "Profiles of the Future" where Clarke revisits technological predictions made in the sixties to see where they are now. Still though, if you're going to spend any considerable time predicting what technology or warfare will be like in the future, you should start by looking at where it is now and how it got there.

P.S. For the record, my favourite future warfare sci-fi and for my money, the one that is bang on for where we'll be is the HALO universe, particularly the novels.

Gender bias or just perspective bias?

Yesterday RTE carried a story in which Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness called for the establishment of gender quotas in the Dail to tackle the issue of gender equality. She said that Ireland has one of the lowest percentages of female political representatives and that unless decisive action is taken, it could take as much as 20 years to redress the balance. There are however, two key problems with her argument, firstly her numbers don't add up and secondly she falls into the trap of faulty cause and effect.

First off, let's look at the actual numbers. One of the "facts" quoted by Ms. McGuinness is that a woman's chances of being elected are about 72% that of a man. In the 30th Dail elections in 2007 there were 471 candidates in total. The gender split of these candidates is 391 men and 80 women. This represents 83% and 17% of the total respectively. When we then analyse the candidates and extract those who are current or former members of the house, we that the number of male candidates who have held political office is  164 which is 41.94% of all men or 34.82%  of all candidates. The number of females who have held political office is 33 which is 41.25% of all women or 7% of all candidates. Therefore, when we look at the electoral success rates of men and women, we see that it depends on how you look at it. 

The overall chance of a man being elected is five times that of a woman. When you examine the weighted percentages though, this bias disappears and you see a strikingly similar success rate: 41.94% vs. 41.25%. The reasonable conclusion to draw from this information then is that it is not electoral success that is the issue for female candidates but rather the number of female candidates who choose to put themselves forward. There is an important caveat here, however. The internal machinations of political parties when it comes to selecting candidates for election is not an easily accessible matter of public record and so it is unknown how many men or women put their name down at local level but are unsuccessful in obtaining their party's nomination. In this event, however, it is unwise to make conclusions about gender bias either way.

The issue of gender equality like most things life is complicated. There is more often than not, in gender bias debates, an assumption that the root cause of gender bias in a particular industry is because of current or historical oppression of women. Take truck driving for example. In 1995 there were 130,000 female truck drivers in America. Ten years later there were 155,000. There may now be as many as 200,000 female truckers in America. Yet female drivers represent just 15% of the total workforce. Some would argue that this is because women are only now being allowed to be truck drivers and societal norms would have forbidden such activity previously. It can also be argued however, that women before were simply not interested in becoming truck drivers. With changing economic conditions and an industry which suffers huge shortages in qualified drivers, more women would be tempted into careers as truck drivers.

The fact of the matter is that men and women have always had different roles in society. Difference does not equal inequality, however. When we examine the earliest human civilisations and modern primitive cultures, we see vastly different roles for men and women. In hunter-gatherer societies men would leave the village in a group for days on end, stalking some large predator. The women on the other hand, would care for all the children communally while gathering fire wood, berries, nuts and other food items as a group. This led to the development of different character traits in men and women. Women are more sociable, are better judges of character and do better on verbal reasoning and memory tests. Men on the other hand are more solitary and more competitive than women and do better on spatial reasoning and mathematical reasoning tests. These traits are deeply embedded in modern humans, and it is unwise to reason that we will be capable of adjusting over 100,000 years of hunter-gatherer lifestyle in just twenty or fifty or a hundred years. That's not to say that we shouldn't try to change things, just that we should be more realistic in how long it's going to change things.

This is where Mairead McGuinness has made a fundamental flaw in her logic. It's not the parliamentary system, that's broken, clearly female candidates are just as attractive to the voting public as male candidates. Rather, it's society that needs changing and we need to find ways to engage women on taking personal responsibility for bringing about such change. A quota system is not the answer and will lead to an even more broken Dail than the one we saw disintegrate before our eyes this week. 

We should cut Ms. McGuinness some slack though. It's easy to see how the lone female candidate losing her seat in a constituency with eleven male candidates could perceive that there is a gender bias in the country at large. Unfortunately, for most of our politicians, reality is a strange and disturbing place.

When hypocrisy demands recognition

Earlier this week, news agencies around the world carried the story of a gay couple who received £3600 in compensation because they were refused a room in a B&B by the Christian couple who own it. The judge found that despite the deeply and sincerely held beliefs of the owners, they had in fact directly discriminated against the couple on the basis of sexual orientation.

The interesting thing about this case was the claim from the owners that their policy on double rooms was based on their views on marriage and that it is applied consistently to all unmarried couples. The gay couple in this case were in a civil partnership, however, and this fact started off a thought process in my head which goes like this.

Q: The couple in this case were in a civil partnership but were still refused a room. Why?

A: The owners must not consider civil partnership to be marriage.

Q: The only reason that there is civil partnership in the UK instead of full marriage is because of Christian oppostion so why is that?

A: Because they consider homosexuality to be sinful.

Q: Why?

A: Because the bible says so.

Q: Where does it say that in the bible?

A: Leviticus 18:22 (Thou shalt not lie with mankind as you lie with womankind; it is an abomination)

Q: What else does Leviticus prohibit?

A: Tattoos, astrology, eating fat or blood, eating pork, eating seafood that lacks fins or scales, working on the sabbath, eating leavened bread on the sabbath.

Q: So why don't Christians call for laws against these things or even practice them privately.

A: Because they're all HYPOCRITES.

Neither hypocrisy nor some dusty commandment pulled out of some Jew's ass deserves legal recognition. We can and should tolerate disparate beliefs but discrimination is crossing the line.

The pinnacle of bad science

So it has turned out that bad science has plumbed new depths with the publication of Brian Deer's investigation of Andrew Wakefield's shameful MMR-Autism study. I'm not going to go into the minutiae of the debacle but suffice to say that even in light of the fraud perpetrated by Wakefield in the publication of this paper, there are still conspiracy nuts out there who maintain that Wakefield is a patsy who has been targeted by major pharmaceutical companies for his courageous stance against a dangerous drug. To set the record straight, I have gathered together a brief synopsis of the story.


Original Paper:

Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children

(Note: You will need to register with the Lancet to view the full text of the article but it's free)


Retraction Notice:

The Lancet, February 2010


GMC Ruling:

Fitness to practise hearing – 28 January 2010


Contradictory Studies:

• No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study
• Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children
• Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccine during the routine childhood immunisation schedule of UK
• No evidence for a new variant of measles-mumps-rubella-induced autism
• No evidence of persisting measles virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from children with autism spectrum disorder
• Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses
• Unintended events following immunisation with MMR: a systematic review

(Note: The second and last articles are both review articles, containing a synopsis of 31 and 22 different study papers respectively)


There are some general conclusions to be drawn from this whole sorry scandal which are pretty evident when you examine all the available information.

• This is not a scam by "Big Pharma" for the purposes of pushing a new product on the general public. The MMR vaccine like most others, is one which you only receive once or twice in your lifetime. No pharmaceutical company is going to make major cash with a phoney vaccine. 

• The use of mercury as a preservative in the MMR vaccine is not the cause of autism. At the time when mercury was used in the MMR vaccine it was also used in other vaccines and yet there has been no claims in relation to autism being caused by any other vaccine. In addition, mercury has been removed from vaccines since 2001 and yet autism cases continue to increase. Also, when the MMR vaccine was removed from use in Japan in 1993, the number of autism cases continued to increase. 

• Correlation is not causation. Part of the bad science problem that pervades society today is that someone notices one event following another and suddenly proclaims that one caused the other. This is a well understood principle referred to as: post hoc ergo propter hoc (after it therefore because of it). Fifty years ago, the most common example of this fallacy was cures for warts. There were almost as many cures for warts as there were people who suffered from them. Now it's causes for cancer. Almost every other day you hear some new cause for cancer: fried food, popcorn, sunlight etc. Even last year a "doctor" appeared on tv saying that Irish women should drink more soya milk because Chinese women drink twice as much soya milk as Irish women and have a rate of cervical cancer only a third of Irish women. I'm sure that Chinese women cycle more than Irish women as well but nobody is going to suggest that cycling prevents cancer. 

• The scientific method is a powerful tool. This story has had a beneficial effect, it has shown the world the scientific method in operation and shown how simple and elegant it is. If you publish results of an experiment in a paper then it releases that information into the scientific community where any interested scientist can reproduce your experiment to see if they get the same results. And thus the downfall of Wakefield was forged as one scientist after another repeated the experiment but could not reproduce Wakefield's results.

An expert in immunology, Paul Offit, has written an excellent rebuttal of the anti-vaxers called Deadly Choices. It's well worth reading as it covers not just the modern MMR controversy but the opposition experienced by vaccination pioneers all the way back to Jenner. In fact the only problem I have with the book is the conclusion Offit reaches about the motivation of the anti-vaxers. He suggests that these nutters like Jenny McCarthy suffer from Jack D. Ripper syndrome. They are repulsed that their precious bodily fluids would be contaminated by a foreign substance like a vaccine. Think Howard Hughes only worse, and you're getting there.


I think that there is a far more plausible explanation to be found if you study the world of conspiracy theorists. The MMR vaccine controversy is essentially a conspiracy theory. Anti-vaxers contend that MMR is causing autism and apart from Andrew Wakefield, there is a massive conspiracy among major pharmaceutical companies to suppress this information to which the CDC, the government and any other agency which takes their fancy is party. This behaviour is common to all conspiracy theorists and it stems from an overriding desire to have an explanation for the world. These people cannot bring themselves to accept the idea that their child has contracted autism due to genetics or chance or something outside perhaps not their control but somebody's control. They would like to believe that there was always a system, a tangible cause for their child's condition.


At the end of all this tragedy, we must now face the realisation that we will not see the full effect of the anti-vaxers shameful efforts for at least a generation. While some children will become sick now and suffer immediate adverse effects, those who don't will grow up not having been vaccinated and have children who are even more vulnerable to disease because children rely on their mother's immune system for the first six months of their life. It is then that we'll see really horrible diseases like SSPE (sub-sclerosing pan-encephalitis) rear its ugly head and the legacy of one man's fraud is known.

ABC, ECHR and Abortion

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland did not sufficiently protect the constitutionally guaranteed right of a woman to have an abortion (if her life is endangered) through adequate legislation. Of course, this is not the way in which the media reported it. From headline reports to opinion pieces, almost all commentators on the verdict got it wrong. People on both sides of the abortion debate rushed to make their voice heard. On the right you had Youth Defence who opined that the verdict was "intrusive, unwelcome and an attempt to violate Ireland's pro-life laws". On the left you had CNN who carried the headline "Court condemns Irish ban on abortion". The core of the ruling centres on Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution which states:

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

This article was introduced into the constitution by means of a referendum in 1983. 27 years later and despite a Supreme Court ruling on the issue in 1992, the government has still not introduced legislation as the constitution clearly promises to guarantee women the right to have an abortion if their health is threatened.

 Of course, once people start reading more into a story than is actually there, you end up with all sorts of crazy shit coming out such as the Youth Defence article above. Look, we signed up to Europe in 1973 and reinforced this commitment through various treaties such as Maastricht and Nice and Lisbon. We are also signatories to the UN and European conventions on human rights, the latter of which is the document which founded the European Court of Human Rights at the centre of this story. We chose to be involved in a unified Europe and current economic conditions not withstanding, we have been better off because of it. It is, therefore, just a little bit preposterous to suggest that the EU shouldn't safeguard the rights of its citizens.

Leaving aside the current case for a moment, the recent media storm brings the topic of abortion back into the public sphere once again. On one level, people have to realise that the debate over abortion is never going to go away, at least as long as religion exists. On the other hand, the government must put legislation in place which safeguards the rights of all citizens. Also, the key points of the legislation must be based on reasonable conclusions made from concrete evidence. There are several issues which combine to make abortion the social hot-button that it is. By taking each one in turn, however, it is possible to determine a reasonable approach to the overall issue.

The first and most important issue is the point at which life begins. The pro-life movement usually begin from the position that life begins at conception and therefore any abortion results in the death of a person. Unfortunately, these people cannot proffer any substantive evidence to back up this claim. Even those who use their religion to guide their view on abortion (the majority of pro-lifers) cannot rely on their religion to back them up. Anyone looking to the bible for an answer will only find this:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul

 This would mean that life begins when the blood begins to flow which is day 22. However, despite claims from some god-botherers to the contrary, we don't make laws based on the bible. We use, or at least should use, medical criteria to decide medical matters. In this case, a reliable existing method for determining when life begins. We have a defined criterion for when life ends, the cessation of brain activity. Therefore by mirroring this, we have a solid basis for determining when life begins, which is 9 weeks after fertilisation. Given the normal course of events for a woman when determining whether or not she is pregnant, an upper time limit of 2 months would be a reasonable starting point in determining a window for legal abortions.

The next most important question is that of the health and the rights of the mother. At its most basic level, this argument, which is the basis of the recent court case, deals with the rights of a woman to safeguard her own health. There is no easy solution to this problem. In most cases, you have two patients with conflicting interests which you have to try and balance between speculative and definitive diagnoses. The one thing I will say is that it is the first duty of the attending doctor to act in the best interest of the mother since she is his patient. Each case should be reviewed on an individual basis where a panel of doctors can review all the evidence. In the end, though, I think that if there is a real risk to the health of the mother that abortion should be permissible. After all, we are humans, not salmon, nobody ever intended for us to expend our lives for the sake of offspring.

Another issue which requires treatment is where the act of conception itself involves some degree of trauma for the mother, i.e. rape, incest etc. I know that the pro-lifers consider all life to be sacred, regardless but what compassionate person would condemn a woman to carrying with her a living reminder of an unspeakable act. That's torture whatever way you want to dress it up.

There are so many more other issues but those above are the ones which, if not the most important, are certainly the ones which attract the most attention. The issue as a whole is delicate and for a lot of people involves suffering and heartbreak but it is something which we must debate with a clear head and even temper.

I have to say, though, that the most disturbing aspect of the abortion debate is the argument against abortion that is promoted by some groups is nothing short of disgusting. There are quite a few people out there, who argue that, if abortion were legalised then women would be lining up to get them. They reason that abortion is a temptation and women, who seek to live a promiscuous life without consequence, use abortion as a means to maintain that lifestyle. That's just batshit crazy. It is based on an utterly perverted view of women and the people who argue in this fashion are usually men (though not always) and more often than not Christian. The Bible has always forwarded the view that women are sinners and bereft of redeeming qualities but this is nuts. For most women, having an abortion is often the worst day of their lives and the worst decision they'll ever have to make.

Finally, this whole story has reminded me, to a certain extent, of the debacle surrounding the opening of pubs on Good Friday this year. There is a certain argument to be made in this regard and with censorship in general that personal choice should be considered. If you are a "good" Christian, then I'm sure that you wouldn't drink on Good Friday, just as I'm sure that you wouldn't get divorced or have an abortion or watch porn or anything else that your mythology forbids. The fact that you wouldn't, though, doesn't mean that anyone else shouldn't. We're not all Christians and we're not all bound by the strictures of your mythos. There's no reason why we should live by Christian morals or even respect them. As Ricky Gervais so neatly stated earlier this week:

You are entitled to your own opinions. But not your own facts.

Christianity and the Subversion of Myth

In my last post I touched briefly on the subject of syncretism, the tendency of new mythologies to build themselves from the remnants of their predecessors. There is nothing inherently sinister about syncretism; it's merely a method of relating the tenets of the new mythology in terms that adherents of the old one will understand. Christianity has for the most part, however, distorted syncretism beyond an attempt to convey a message and Christians have tried to rewrite history from their own faith. The most common examples of this are: Christmas (which I have mentioned previously), the idea that all modern laws stem from Christianity and that the United States was founded as a christian nation. Naturally this is complete bullshit. The following examples will show that Christianity is as someone recently stated "old wine in new bottles".

Moses

Moses being central to both the Jewish faith and Christianity is the perfect place to begin.  The story of the birth of Moses is outlined in Exodus 2:1-3

And a man of the house of Levi went and took as wife a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank.

It sounds like a plausible story until you read the story of Horus, son of Isis and Osiris in Egyptian mythology, 1700 years previously.

The battle between the two resulted in the death of Osiris, but before he died Osiris had impregnated his wife, Isis, goddess of wisdom and beauty. Isis in turn gave birth to Horus, the falcon-headed god of kingship. When Seth learned that his brother Osiris’s offspring had been born, he sought to kill the baby Horus. Isis prepared a basket of reeds to hide him in the marshland of the Nile Delta, where she suckled him and protected him, along with the watchful eye of her sister, Nephthys, from the snakes, scorpions and other dangerous creatures until he grew and prospered.

Of course the story of Horus remains an influence on Christianity, just compare the depictions of Isis and Horus with that of Mary and Jesus.

The Resurrection

The next most important theme in Christianity is the resurrection. The resurrection is central to Christianity for a number of reasons, the promise of life after death, the divinity of Jesus and the claim that the resurrection is what separates Christianity from other religions. Except that it doesn't. The concept of a life-death-rebirth cycle is one of the most widespread themes in pre-Christian mythologies. For those unfamiliar, the simplified version of the idea is that Jesus was born, grew up, was crucified, waited 3 days and then came back to life.

Similarly in Norse mythology, in the Hávamál, there is a story told about the discovery of runes by Odin. According to the story, Odin is eager to learn the wisdom of the runes to give him power in the nine worlds. He therefore sacrifices himself to himself (not inventing another personality for himself was kinda inconvenient) and is hung from the world tree Yggdrasil for nine days and nights (the number 9 being of particular importance to Norse mythology) and is finally pierced in the side by his own spear Gungir. He later returns to life having gained this new knowledge. Sound familiar?

Similar stories can be found in many other mythologies, including but not limited to Osiris (Egyptian), Orpheus (Greek), Mithras (Zoroastrian), Tammuz (Bablyonian) and Zalmoxis (Dacian).




Miracles

Miracles are the lifeblood of Christianity in general and the Catholic church in particular. For 2000 years, the evangelisation of pre-christian cultures has been driven by the revelation of "holy" people who have been tools of God in showing their fellow people the way. Even today a past history of attributable miracles is a necessary step on the path to sainthood. It pays the church to recognise some unexplained events as miracles and when it comes to Jesus, miracles have to be plentiful. Unfortunately, Jesus seems to be just a tribute act, recreating "miracles" which had already been documented hundreds and sometimes thousands of years before.

The marriage feast of Cana
Widely recognised by Christians as the first miracle performed by Jesus, the marriage feast of Cana features the miraculous and seemingly impossible feat of turning water into wine. It might seem impossible for the son of a Jewish carpenter but not for the Greek god Dionysus who pulled off the same trick at his marriage to Ariadne in Greek mythology.


Lazarus
Bringing people back from the dead must surely be a miracle, unless of course you've got a defibrillator handy. Still though, Jesus managed to bring Lazarus back by just speaking to him, just as Asclepius had done for Hippolytus in Greek mythology centuries before.


The Feeding of the Multitude
This is a difficult one to sift through for several reasons. Firstly, as can be seen in other stories, the Bible can't even seem to agree with itself. In the gospel of John, 5000 people are fed from five loaves and two fish with 12 basketfuls of leftovers. In Matthew's gospel though, 4000 people are fed from seven loaves and two fish with seven basketfuls of leftovers. The numbers are not that important since, like the rest of Christian numerology, they relate to observable phenomena of the time. The five and the seven both relate to the number of visible celestial objects in the night sky - 5 planets and the sun and moon for a total of seven. The twelve represents the zodiac while the two fish represent the constellation Pisces. Astrologers have stated that this is the age of Pisces which began around 1 CE and will end around 2150.
Other aspects of the story mirror the story of Horus in Egyptian Mythology. Horus is known as the distributor of loaves in Egyptian mythology and his city of Annu or Heliopolis is known as the place of multiplying bread. Also Horus is aided in some stories by Taht who in stories of Ra is "the word made flesh". Taht in stories of Horus is represented as a boy who brings food to Horus to be distributed just as the young boy does in John's gospel.


There are many more examples of this throughout Christian mythology but this post is long enough already. The most important realisation to be gained from all this, though, is that, in the words of one biblical scholar:

We are faced with the inescapable realization that if Jesus actually lived in the flesh in the first century A.D., and if he had been able to read the documents of old Egypt, he would have been amazed to find his own biography already substantially written some four or five thousand years previously

 When you come to understand the area and time in which Christian myth was born you begin to understand the forces that shaped it. Israel at one point in history was in a position so central in the known world that every major civilisation surrounding it had some varying degree of influence. The mythology of Christianity is built from components of its geographical and temporal predecessors including Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Dacian, Sumerian, Babylonian and Zoroastrian.

The Bible is a Chinese whisper, the last written omnibus of an oral history which stretches back thousands of years. The stories themselves are an attempt to understand the world but we have moved on in the last 2000 years and some of the questions they pose have been answered while others have changed. All that remains are fairy stories and outdated social guidelines. If you really want to pass on stories with a moral compass to your children, I suggest the Simpsons box set instead. It'll probably be cheaper in the long run.

Who said atheists can't bring peace and love?

I'm really starting to get into the Christmas spirit at the moment. That may sound strange coming from an atheist but then I always have to laugh at the news stories this time of year talking about "The war on Christmas" or the furore over using Happy Holidays instead of Happy Christmas. Really it's just another example of christians, particularly American christians trying to rewrite history by suggesting that if it weren't for their pokey mythology then people wouldn't have any reason to celebrate in December. Of course this is bullshit. 

I've said it before but I'll say it again, there is nothing new or original contained in christianity. Every holy day observed by christians can trace its roots to some earlier tradition. Here in Ireland, St. Brigid's day is celebrated on the 1st February on the same day as the old Celtic holiday of Imbolc. Halloween is celebrated on 31st October, the same day as the Celtic festival of Samhain. Christmas of course, is a modern incarnation of the celebration of the winter solstice which can be found as far back as 3100 BCE in Newgrange. Even the trappings of Christmas such as holly and mistletoe have origins which predate christianity.

In any case, the point of this post is about sharing the love this time of year. Most of all, I love hearing Christmas songs, particularly the crooners (although that can be from playing too much Fallout 3). My favourite, however is one that was released just 3 months before I was born and has the best message of them all:

"No hell below us, above us only sky, ... nothing to kill or die for, no religion too" 

I can't think of a better sentiment.